What Signs Remain
by littlelindentree
Summary: Beth's kidnapping goes down a little differently, in that it doesn't go down. A Bethyl AU that splits off from canon during 4x13 "Alone."
1. the road

_Just before the flood comes_  
 _Just before the night falls_  
 _Just before the blood runs_  
 _Into the valley_  
 _Just before my eyes go_  
 _Just before we can't go any further_  
 _Love throws a line to you and me_

\- Patty Griffin, "Love Throw a Line"

* * *

In the middle of the empty, unlit highway, crouching with his hands resting on his knees and his hair dripping sweat into his eyes, Daryl stops.

The tail lights of the car are long gone.

Beth's gone. They're all gone, now. He's alone.

He inhales, tries to slow his breathing. The pain in his chest is like a knife. And he wishes it were, really, wishes he were dead, that the walkers had got him in that basement that stank of bleach and formaldehyde. That he'd gone down fighting instead of whatever horrible, fucked-up thing _this_ is, this next nightmare, this next ordeal. The next thing to be survived.

And Beth. _Beth._ Gone like a clap of dry thunder in the night.

 _Last man standing_ , she'd called him. Fuck the last man standing. He didn't want to be that man. Not if it meant this, over and over - feel safe for five minutes in a row and then watch it all go to shit. Watch the next person die.

He's failed again. He had failed to protect them all at the prison and he's failed to protect her now, let her get snatched right up from under his nose.

For weeks, now, his occupation had narrowed to her alone. Her safety. Her empty stomach. Her shivers at night. Her sweet smile. Her laughing eyes. Her hands building fires and setting snares. Her swift feet running. Her aim. Her sharpness. Her survival. He'd needed to know she'd have a chance without him, and now he wonders if he even managed that.

As for who took her, and why, he can't stand to think about it, dark images of the worst possibilities running through his brain like a movie montage of gore. He'd shown her how best to kill walkers, seen her get a good handle on it, but what about people?

He bows his head, listens to his own ragged breathing, the pop-hiss of each painful breath. _Fuckin' smokes_ \- his lungs are wrecked.

Daryl feels old. He feels so fucking old. Older than he'd ever wanted to be.

He stands up straight, looks around him. The dark, pressing walls of forest on either side of the highway. Everything is quiet but for the songs of crickets and frogs, and, high above, the papery whisper of wings as bats swoop out of their daytime hideaways, catching mosquitoes and moths out of the air.

No walkers. No people. Just him and the woods, and a trail to follow.

 _Ain't nothin' for it_ , he thinks.

Daryl takes a deep breath, hoists his crossbow onto his shoulders, and carries on down the road.

* * *

Beth's head is spinning.

The last thing she remembers clearly is burying her knife in a walker's brain as she ran, half-limping, across the yard in front of the funeral home. Then, foggy blackness like a deep sleep, and now the smooth, rumbling motion of a car. For a hazy moment, she thinks that Daryl must have found a car, that he's driving them someplace safe.

The body beneath her shifts, and instantly Beth knows that Daryl is not with her. A heavy arm is slung around her chest; she's being held tightly, roughly, a sweaty palm loosely covering her mouth. She's being _held down_ , so no, there's no possible way Daryl's there with her. Fear pulses under her skin, a wave of nausea rolling through her.

Her face throbs. Someone punched her; she remembers it now, the sound of a fist hitting her cheekbone, bright lights exploding like fireworks behind her eyelids. She swallows the rising nausea churning inside her. The car swerves, tossing her against the man holding her. He laughs, loud and harsh, right in her ear, all hot breath and spittle on her cheek.

Beth opens her eyes a slit, sees the lights on the dashboard. A man in the passenger seat is laughing too, his teeth bared, a bottle of booze lifted to his lips.

 _This is screwed_ , she thinks. _I'm screwed._

Beth struggles to stay limp in the man's arms, to play possum. Curling up and crying would once have been her first and only response, but now she feels the hot rush of blood roaring in her ears as her heart pumps, her muscles quiver, her senses sharpen.

She wants to fight them.

Distantly, she knows she is afraid - _terrified_ \- and yet all she wants to do is kick and thrash and land as many blows as possible; crash the car if she has to, she doesn't care.

Every part of her cries out to fight them and to run, run fast, run all the way back to Daryl, miles behind her now, a herd of walkers closing in on him somewhere inside that damn house. The thought makes her want to scream in frustration.

These are three grown men, big men, and she has to assume they're the worst kind of violent, cruel men - the kind that seem to thrive in this world. And Beth knows what that means for her.

She forces herself to remain calm, allows her head to loll onto her shoulder even as she cringes at the feeling of the man's arm around her torso, locking her arms to her sides. His unoccupied hand moves, palming her breast just because he can, because her sweater disappeared in the struggle and she's here and he's stronger than she is and he _can_. Beth's stomach turns.

"Yeah, that's right, sweetheart," one of them says, the one up in the passenger seat. "You relax, take a little nap. You wanna save your energy."

They all laugh, because of course they do. Of course these men think nothing of laughing at her like this, of laughing at her helplessness. They _like_ that they can hurt her, that she won't fight them.

Of course, that's what they _would_ think.

The arms of the man holding her loosen the slightest bit as he shifts in his seat, distracted, trusting her small size, the appearance of weakness and compliance. Trusting she won't fight; that even if she did, she'd be no threat.

Knowing she may not get another chance, Beth opens her mouth and bites down hard on the fleshy palm still covering her mouth, and pulls, the skin tearing between her teeth.

"Fuck!" he shouts, instantly letting her go to cradle his injured hand.

Beth slams her head back into the man's nose, ignoring the sharp pain that shoots through her head as her skull connects with his teeth. She hurls herself forward and grabs the driver's face from behind, scratching at him until she meets some give; she jams her fingers into his eyes and digs, feeling the sickening squish of viscera bursting under her ragged nails, hot blood gushing into her hands.

The driver bellows in pain and the car swerves, brakes squealing, lurching across the empty highway and stopping sharply. Beth jolts, her chin hitting the back of the driver's seat hard, cracking into her teeth and reverberating sharply into her skull and her neck.

The man behind her grabs her by the hair, yanking her back hard. Beth yelps and sees stars, tumbling across him, halfway to the floor of the car. She hears the man in the passenger seat scrambling out of the car and she knows that the next few moments will decide if she survives this or not.

Beth kicks out across the back seat at the one who was holding her, the sharp heel of her boot repeatedly catching his knee, his shin, his forearm as he tries to shield himself.

He's shocked, she sees, shocked that this is happening, that the waif they found at the side of the road is fighting back like this. He didn't expect this. None of them did.

The thought makes her proud, makes her angry. Makes her fierce.

"Fuck you," she snarls in a voice she has never heard from herself before. She's shocked, too.

Beth's heel connects with his jaw with a bony crunch and he curses, stops trying to grab her flailing leg as he brings his bleeding hand up to shield himself. Her injured ankle shoots pain up her leg.

She lunges forward, feeling the muscles in her neck and her shoulders strain painfully. She grabs at the handgun in his holster, feels her fingers brush the handle. With a pained shout of her own she stretches and grabs it.

Beth doesn't even bother to threaten, barely bothers to aim - she cocks the gun and squeezes the trigger. The snap of the gun firing is loud in the closeness of the car, and glass breaks as the bullet shatters the window behind the man. Beth cocks the gun and pulls again, gasping at the hot blood that spatters her face when the bullet explodes his cheekbone and temple.

Scrambling backwards, Beth tumbles out of the passenger side door and struggles to her feet, clutching the gun like a life preserver. The driver is somewhere on the ground on the other side of the car, howling in pain. She sees the man from the passenger seat standing by him, shouting something.

Beth runs around the back of the car and makes for the driver's seat where the door hangs open, but the man turns from the driver and lunges at her, a handgun gripped in his fist. Beth cocks the gun again and squeezes the trigger. He lets out an outraged shriek as the bullet grazes his arm. Squaring her shoulders, Beth fires again, landing a chest shot.

The man crumples with a curse, clutching his middle. Beth is on him in a moment, wrenching his weapon from his hands. He's bleeding heavily already, dark blood soaking the front of his shirt. Over his groans, Beth is dimly aware of the car's engine still running. Beyond that, the faint sound of branches breaking, of awkward feet lumbering through the brush, of snarls and wet snapping jaws.

Walkers, attracted by the noise.

She doesn't stop to make sure her kidnappers are dead or dying. She doesn't stop to search their bodies, nor to give any of them the reprieve of a head shot.

 _Let the walkers have them_ , she thinks.

Instead, she walks over and takes the driver's handgun, shoving it into the waistband of her jeans. That's when she sees that he's wearing a police uniform. _Atlanta Police Department_. Beth stares. It doesn't seem possible that people entrusted to protect others could do the things these men did to her. The things she can only assume they planned to do to her. It's not right. It's not how things are _supposed_ to be.

Of course, nothing is, anymore.

The low, moaning growls of the approaching walkers shake her into action, and Beth wrenches the car's rear door open. The last man's body tumbles halfway out onto the pavement. He's covered in blood, but Beth doesn't pause to see if he's still alive, barely glances at the gore of his shattered skull. She hauls him out by his armpits, groaning at the dead, solid weight of him, and dumps his body in the road. Panting, she shuts the door, the last clinging shards of glass knocking loose and scattering onto the pavement.

Beth leaps into the driver's seat and slams the door shut behind her. She slaps a hand down on the locks, securing herself inside the vehicle, and drops the three handguns onto the passenger seat. She thinks of the night she and Daryl spent in the trunk of that abandoned car, sweltering and listening to dozens of walkers scrabble at the metal with their broken nails. She swallows the sob that erupts at the thought of that horrible night, the powerful rush of escape draining away, leaving behind only terror.

 _Daryl,_ she thinks, her mind racing. _I have to find Daryl._

Swiping a hand across her sweaty, blood-streaked face, Beth places both shaking hands on the steering wheel. She breathes deeply and slowly, willing her frantic heart to slow down.

He could be anywhere by now, she knows. He probably disappeared into the woods as soon as he got out of the funeral home. _If_ he did. She knows what he'd say if he were with her – _no chance. Bound to be walker chow._

Beth chews her lip for a moment, trying to ride out the panic that grips her. She has to find Daryl. _Has to_.

Taking another deep breath, she puts the car in gear and turns it around.

* * *

Daryl's fucked, and he knows it.

Pulling a bolt out of a walker's eye socket, he swings around and plunges it into the skull of the next one.

He's outnumbered and exhausted. He can barely keep ahead of the herd on his tail, and there's been nowhere to hide for miles. Just more road, more forest, more space. More walkers, too.

So, he's fucked. This is how it ends. He's gonna get bit, and get dragged along into this herd, and that'll be that. There's not even anyone left to mercy kill him.

A walker near the front of the herd reaches for him with its one arm, the other missing. It gropes at him, teeth snapping, and Daryl plunges the bolt through its temple and into its rotting brain with ease. He kicks out at another walker, hitting it square in the stomach and sending it stumbling back.

Faint light appears from behind him, illuminating the herd. There are at least a dozen, too many to handle alone, exhausted and strung out on prolonged panic as he is, but they pause, staring dumbly out of their yellowed eyes as the light grows in intensity, capturing their attention.

Daryl hears the low hum of a car speeding towards him.

A walker, undeterred by the distraction, grabs at him, managing to take hold of his vest. Daryl yanks himself away, stabbing at the walker. He misses, connecting with the walker's bony shoulder, and the bolt snaps. Daryl gropes at his belt for his hunting knife and barely manages to hold the walker off long enough to stab it in the temple.

He hears the squeal of tires and looks up, seeing a dark car screech to a stop about twenty feet from him, walkers thumping messily across the hood.

Its door is thrown open, but Daryl can't see clearly, occupied trying to fight off the walkers that haven't been drawn to the car.

He hears the sound of a handgun discharging, hears bodies hit the ground.

"Daryl!"

He freezes, turns. _Beth_. She's there in the middle of the remaining walkers, a gun in each hand, fighting them off.

"Daryl, look out!"

A surge of adrenaline slams into him, and he stabs the walker beside him, moves forward into the crowd of them and stabs again, feeling walker blood and brains splatter his face and his clothes. Gunshots ring out, and Daryl stumbles as another walker grabs at him from behind.

Daryl falls to his knees. Beth surges forward and shoots the walker. It crumples down, landing half across Daryl's legs.

"Daryl - are you bit?"

He can't believe it. There is no goddamn way in this gone-to-shit world that Beth is standing in front of him, holding her hand out to help him up. Her eyes are wide and bright in the glare of the headlights. She's soaked in sweat, spattered with blood, her face cut and bruised. Her sweater is gone; she's just standing there in her torn yellow golf shirt and ragged jeans. She's breathing hard, and he can practically feel the adrenaline pumping through her, radiating out of her pores.

She looks fierce and terrible and amazing.

Around them, every damn one of the walkers is dead.

"Daryl," she says again, her voice strained and insistent. "Come on. We gotta go. _Now._ "

Something in her voice stirs him, some steely quality he'd never heard from her until the day she'd flipped him off, wrenched her arm from his grip with unexpected strength, and told him she wasn't going to stay in his suck-ass camp.

 _Suck-ass camp_. Daryl feels the absurd urge to laugh.

Then she's crouching down in front of him, the frayed knees of her jeans right in front of his face. He feels her touch his arm ever so gently, like she doesn't want to startle him.

"Daryl," she says, her voice low and urgent and _kind_ , the hardness gone. "Daryl, please. We gotta _go_."

He swallows hard and lifts his head, looks at her properly. She's watching him with such concern, like he's the one who got kidnapped, who needed rescuing. He feels like a complete idiot.

"Ain't bit," he manages, his voice hoarsened to a whisper.

"Good," Beth breathes, something almost like a smile passing through her expression.

With a groan, Daryl shifts his weight, moves his screaming muscles and climbs awkwardly to his feet. She tries to help him but he bats her hand away. There's a long moment when they stand there, just looking at each other, and Daryl feels the urge to pull her to him and hug her, hard, tuck her inside his vest and his shirt, wrap his arms around her.

Instead, he leans in and examines her face in the moonlight. Scratches, bruises. What's shaping up to be a hell of a shiner on one eye where someone clearly punched her. A raw scrape on her chin. Drying blood crusted in her hair, spattered in drops all over her. Bits of walker gore stuck to her clothes, her skin. Daryl's stomach feels like it's dropped somewhere around his knees. The walkers weren't enough; he wants to destroy something, wants to scream, wants to rage.

He wants to feel her solid weight against him, convince himself that she's really here.

Daryl knows how it happened, this girl becoming everything he has in the world, but he doesn't know why it matters. It didn't used to. He didn't used to need her. He didn't used to need anybody.

He's tried so hard for none of it to matter.

"Come on," Beth says, turning away from him then, her long ponytail whipping behind her. She runs back to the car, sliding into the driver's seat and slamming the door. Daryl moves as quickly as he can to the passenger side and slumps into the seat.

"Which way?" she asks, turning to look at him.

Daryl has no idea. No fucking clue. He feels overwhelmed, stunned into inaction.

"Just drive," he croaks, sinking deeper into the seat. The car stinks of stale body odour and cheap whiskey, of blood and spent gunpowder.

He wants to know what happened, except he also really doesn't.

Beth nods, says nothing. She puts the car in gear and steps on the gas, propelling them back down the highway in the direction of the funeral home.

Daryl feels like he has left his body, like he's watching himself from the backseat of the car. He squeezes his stinging eyes shut tightly, tries to hold himself together.

He glances over at her, sees the way her hands clench the steering wheel. Her arms are bruised and red, like someone's rough hands twisted her slender forearm to restrain her. Daryl's familiar; he's had the same marks on his own skin enough times in his life to know.

Daryl's stomach turns over and he forces himself to look away, out the windshield at the tunnel of light the headlights forge ahead of them.

He doesn't know what happened to her, who took her, never mind _why_ , but he knows she oughta be dead. Way this world works, she damn sure oughta be dead. Or worse. Him too, the way he was struggling to fight off that herd that had him.

Daryl takes a shaky breath and glances at her again. Her eyes are fixed ahead, her jaw stiff, her whole body tense. He looks at her and doesn't see the same girl who ran beside him from the prison as it burned. He doesn't frailty anymore, doesn't see someone doomed, someone in need of his protection. He doesn't see just another dead girl. He sees only that she's survived, and she made sure he did, too.

Damn girl saved his ass and then some.

* * *

Beth drives until they reach the funeral home, their pack still abandoned in the road, untouched. In silence, they gather it up and keep driving.

The gas gauge slides from half a tank to a quarter, then to an eighth. Not long after, the gas light begins to glow. Beth drives until the car has guzzled it all, exhausted it into the air, until the sun starts to spread faint light across the horizon and the engine sputters.

Beth eases the slowing car off the highway and down into the shallow ditch. She doesn't know why she bothers; what's another abandoned car on another abandoned highway? But she does anyway. Just in case.

The engine dies with a shuddering hiss. Beth turns the key in the ignition and the headlights extinguish, leaving them sitting in the cool blue light before dawn.

Daryl grabs his crossbow and gets out of the car. Beth follows him, slinging the backpack over her shoulders. They search the back seat and pop the trunk, looking for supplies. Beth finds the holster she took off the walker the day before when she injured her ankle. They must have taken it off her while she was unconscious. She buckles it back on so she has her gun on one hip, her knife on the other. Daryl puts the handguns in Beth's pack, along with a few boxes of ammo from the trunk.

They stand in the road a moment. Daryl stares at the car, a scowl on his face.

"Wish we kept some of that moonshine," he says. "Oughta burn this fucker, too."

Beth says nothing. The fight she had in her has run dry, and she's left feeling hollowed out. She realises she's trembling.

"Y'alright?" Daryl asks, taking a step closer to her. He's examining her face in the half-light, his expression inscrutable.

"Yeah," Beth replies shakily. "I'm fine."

"Y'sure? They didn't -" he gestures vaguely at her.

"No, I'm okay. Really. Just kinda banged up," she says, trying to force a smile. It doesn't work.

Daryl nods tightly, looks away. After a moment, he hands the crossbow to her. Beth takes it, watching as he shrugs off his leather vest and removes the long-sleeved denim shirt beneath. He hands it to her, puts his vest back on over his sleeveless shirt.

"Just 'til we find you somethin'," he says, "That ain't no gift."

A real smile tugs at the corner of her mouth and she nods, setting the backpack down to pull the shirt around her. It's large on her, to say the least, and it's damp and dirty like everything else of theirs, but it's warm from his skin. She buttons it up and shivers with pleasure; she hadn't realised how cold she was.

Apparently satisfied, Daryl takes his crossbow back and turns to survey their surroundings. He's still for a moment, looking down the highway and back up the other way, then into the dark, dense forest on either side. He seems to decide something, for he nods towards the woods.

"C'mon," he says.

Nodding her agreement, Beth pulls the backpack on, and follows him into the tall grass that grows in the ditch.

Daryl reaches down and grabs her hand, tugging her after him into the woods. He laces his fingers with hers, holding her tightly.

He doesn't let go for a long time.


	2. the woods

They walk all night and most of the day that follows, keeping to the woods, away from highways and roads, putting as much distance between themselves and the abandoned car as they can. Just in case someone comes looking.

Beth tries not think about the uniforms.

In the afternoon, they're crossing a shallow creek when Daryl stops in his tracks, cranes his neck, and stares up at the sky. He shades his eyes, turning in a circle, taking in the dome of hazy blue above the treetops.

"S'gonna rain," he says, nodding at her, splashing his way onto the far bank.

As sunset approaches, Daryl finds a little holler full of pines and young birch saplings. He gestures vaguely at the ground at her feet before stalking off, hunting knife in hand. Beth blinks at his retreating back; he wants her to get the fire started. While she gathers kindling and scoops out a patch of dirt to shelter the fire, she can hear Daryl hacking at narrow green sapling trunks with his knife. When he returns, the fire is snapping away at the dry twigs, and thunder rolls in the distance. He's hauling an armload of saplings, and he drops them to the ground beside her.

Sitting back on her heels, Beth heats a can of beans over the fire and observes him. Daryl lashes the saplings together between two tree trunks with long, thin strips of juicy bark, creating a rickety lean-to shelter. An armful of brush and leaves shores up most of the gaps.

"Ain't exactly waterproof but it's better than nothin'," he mutters, crouching to sweep the space under the lean-to of twigs and stones.

Finished, Daryl stands and glances around their campsite, his hands hanging momentarily idle at his sides. His gaze falls on her for a moment, dark and serious, and then he looks away.

 _Oh._

They haven't talked about it, any of it. Not the car or the kidnappers or what Beth did. Not the dog or the grape jelly or the heavy look in Daryl's eyes when the candlelight flickered and her breath caught in her throat.

That look. She doesn't know what to do with that look.

It rains that night, a steady, soaking rain that falls for hours. Daryl nudges her into the back of the lean-to, the only dry spot for miles.

"I'll keep watch," he says, and sits down right in front of her, his back to her, his feet to their dwindling fire.

Beth stares at the fraying embroidered angel wings on his vest. Her breath is a damp shivering fog before her face. She thinks about the candlelit kitchen, the warmth of that quiet moment, and the artless shrug of his shoulders as he tried to say something and _not_ say something in one inelegant motion, in one pointed look of unexpected tenderness. The pulse of self-consciousness that had shaken her, of awareness that when Daryl looked at her, he saw something important, something that mattered to him.

What would she have done, she wonders, had he found even one word for her as she pushed him, pressing obliviously forward into the dark corridor of his gaze? What words could she possibly have said in reply? Probably no more than what she did say - that minuscule word, that little cupped vowel, all exhalation and uncertainty.

 _Oh_.

She doesn't know. She really, truly doesn't know.

Daryl shifts, rummages in his vest. A moment later the sharp scent of cigarette smoke tickles Beth's nose. It smells warm and dry and hard, somehow, and she shivers.

She falls asleep to the sound of the rain dripping off the trees.

* * *

It's unspoken, but they don't split up anymore.

Daryl takes them deeper into the woods in, from what Beth can tell, an approximately northern direction.

The days that follow are a relentless blur of shuffling herds, of campfires too small to push back the darkness, of hunting and hiding and running. Always running.

Beth's ankle heals, but imperfectly. It can bear her weight and she can still run fast. But it aches sometimes at night as the days press deeper into autumn, especially when it rains. Her dad told her once that fractured bones will do that. They heal, weld themselves back together, but they're never what they used to be. The bone remembers the break.

It grows cooler as the leaves change and fall, a crunchy carpet on the forest floor. What used to be the childish joy of fall, kicking through heaps of dry leaves, has become another hazard. Another cruel trick of nature, another way that Beth can misstep, make too much noise and draw death to them.

But Beth steps lightly, barely disturbing the leaves. She has learned to move through the woods almost soundlessly, senses attuned to all those creatures less wary than herself. She learned it by watching him. Daryl. Her stubbornly wordless companion. The last man standing.

Beth starts to wonder if maybe she was wrong back at the stillhouse. Maybe she _could_ make it. Maybe her survival is possible. Maybe she could be there with him, at the end. The end of what, she's not sure.

After all, the end has already come and gone.

All that's left is to keep running. Together.

* * *

They fall right back into the rhythm they had before the funeral home.

Beth remains determined as ever to pull her own weight, Daryl sees, gathering wood and water and lighting their cookfire every time they stop to camp. No damsel, she accepts his protection while hungrily observing everything he does, her eyes following him constantly. She sets snares and guts fish and squirrels like an old hillbilly now.

Beth is mouthier than he knew. More brazen and bossy. Or maybe there's something in him that brings it out in her. She questions everything he does. She's always asking why this, why that, how come. She doesn't realise that he has no real clue what he's doing, never has; he's just moving from place to place without direction, surviving one minute to the next. He never was a leader, never wanted to be.

She learns fast, picking up everything he throws down, her keen mind focused and vigilant.

"Is this okay?" she asks him, indicating with her knife how she plans to gut a raccoon she shot.

She asks him that all the time, about near everything she does. The same damn question, over and over. _Is this okay, Daryl? Is this okay?_

He wants to ask her the same thing.

 _Is this okay, Beth?_

She cries sometimes, now, late at night when they're both playing like they aren't lying awake shivering on opposite sides of their dying fire. Daryl knows she's grieving Hershel, grieving hard. He doesn't know how to comfort her; he never had a dad like Hershel, can't imagine what it must be like to lose him. Never mind the pain of losing everyone else. She's lost more than he has, he knows, 'cause she had more to lose in the first place. Can't fault her for crying it out, even though the sound of her soft sobs, however hard she tries to muffle them, makes Daryl feel like someone's twisting a knife under his ribs.

But she's strong, and her crying doesn't make her any less so. She's strong enough to push through shitty weather, to fight walkers beside him, to smile, to sing songs out loud and unafraid as they walk the woods, to get excited about finding food or a good camping spot. She's everything all at once, strong and gentle, sweet and salty, sorrowful and filled with more joy than he's ever known a person to contain.

She's strong in ways he's not, brave in ways he's not. He never noticed at the farm, or those months on the run last winter, or at the prison. It was easy to overlook. All he saw was the small, blonde space she took up in his world, and identified her as someone in need of his protection. Just another dead girl.

Beth doesn't talk about the night at the funeral home. _That_ night. That horrible fucking night of running and damn near dying and feeling wild with panic, with grief, with the certainty that Beth was gone and he'd never see her again.

He hasn't asked, hasn't pushed, and he doesn't really want to. After all, it's hers. Yet he knows somehow that if things were the other way around, she'd ask him. She'd want to know, wouldn't want him to carry it all on his own. She's done that for him already. Daryl wants the same for her.

Daryl tries a couple of times, tries to figure out how to ask what happened, how to ask if she's really all right. But he can't ever seem to find just the right way until one night, sitting across the fire from her, he gets fed up with himself and goddamn _asks_ her.

"How'd you get away from 'em?"

Beth looks up, startled, and stares at him for several beats before looking back down at the fire. "How do you think?" she replies, pursing her lips, uncomfortable.

It's hard to imagine Beth deliberately hurting anyone, killing anyone. Yet he's watched her hunt, watched her skin and gut their food, watched her take down big walkers on her own.

"Tell me," he says, unsure why he's insisting, only knows that he wants to hear her say it.

Beth doesn't reply, just stares into the fire. After a long moment, she looks at him again. "There were three of them," she says softly. "They were there when I ran to the road, by the car. Like they were waitin' for me. One of 'em grabbed me, punched me, dragged me into the backseat. I was - I _tried_ to get away, but I was so…"

She trails off with a sad, hapless little shrug that makes Daryl feel like someone punched him in the gut.

Beth takes a deep breath and exhales it noisily. "They thought I wouldn't fight, I guess, or that I _couldn't_ , so they didn't tie me up. One of 'em just held me down. They were all drinkin' whiskey, laughin' about somethin'. They got distracted. So I bit the guy's hand, the one holdin' me, and headbutted him, and that was enough for him to let me go so I grabbed the driver's face and jammed my thumbs in his eyes and he swerved all over and stopped the car and the guy in the backseat with me grabbed my hair real hard and kinda shoved me to the floor but that made it easy to kick him in the face a few times and then I grabbed his gun and I - I -" Beth stutters, pauses breathlessly, as though she's simply run out of words.

Daryl stares at her, transfixed by her voice, by the wild look in her eyes. He wishes she'd stop, hopes she never does. She looks up at him, her gaze steady on his.

"I shot him. And then I got out of the car and I shot the other guy. And I left them all for dead. Or worse."

The way she looks at him, then, with her chin stuck out and her expression sad and defiant, pins him in place, like she's daring him to have a problem with it. He wonders how come she doesn't know he'd be about the last person to have a problem with any of what she's done.

"Good," Daryl says, after a long silence. "Fuckers had it comin'."

The corner of Beth's mouth quirks up in a sad little almost-smile, and she looks away from him, back down at the flames between them.

Once, Daryl wouldn't have thought Beth had the stomach for it. Wouldn't have thought a girl like Beth would make it this far. Yet here she is, battered and bruised. Surviving. Willing to fight anyone who tries to harm her, now. He knows she wasn't, once.

"See, you're changing," he says, leaning forward to stoke the fire.

"Yeah," Beth agrees, her tone neutral. She stares into the flames, her arms wrapped around her knees, bare dirty knees under her chin. After a moment, she gives a strange little snort, almost like a scoff. "I guess I asked for it, huh?"

"You said you wished you could change," he says, softly as he can. "Don't mean you asked for that ugly shit to happen."

"I guess," she replies. She falls silent, then, still staring into the fire, and Daryl knows enough to back off. Knows he doesn't have the right words for her, that there are some things you have to feel your way through on your own.

But that's the moment Daryl decides never to underestimate Beth Greene ever again.

* * *

Beth has learned how to move silently through the brush by mimicking Daryl, keeping her upper body rigid and her legs free to move fast over fallen logs. They hunt together, him testing her tracking and her bow skills by switching with her frequently and at random, forcing her to lead.

Daryl isn't wild about her learning to hunt with his bow, she can tell. He's tense when it isn't in his hands. His expression is always drawn and he never praises her, just nods tightly when she's done something right. It isn't until she bags her first deer - only a small doe, she knows, _but still!_ \- that he cracks, giving her a half smile of congratulations.

Beth is surprised to see that there is relief in his expression, too, like a weight has been lifted from his shoulders.

She realizes he wants her to survive, even if it's without him.

Daryl takes to pointing silently at torn branches and tracks in the red dirt, demanding an explanation from her.

"A fox," she says one bright afternoon, crouching to examine a set of tracks in the red dirt. Daryl graces her with a nod.

"Follow it," he says, "she'll lead us to food. Some kinda food, anyway."

They follow the fox deeper into the woods, no trace of roads or highways anywhere.

"What way're we headed?" he asks eventually.

Beth finds the sun in the sky, follows the slant of light as it filters through the treetops. "East."

"How many miles you think it's been since you picked up the trail?"

"Two," she guesses. He just looks at her. "Three?" He nods.

"You think that fox knows you're comin'?" he asks.

"No," Beth says, feeling how the soft breeze touches her face. "We're still downwind." Daryl nods again, and gestures at her to keep walking.

The fox leads them to an abandoned farm. They spot her at the edge of a hayfield - gone to seed, full of yellowed weeds and the dead stalks of wildflowers. The fox sees them approach, and with a flick of her red tail, dashes away in the direction of the unkempt barnyard, towards a chicken coop with its roof half caved in. It doesn't look like chickens have roosted there for a long time, but Beth wishes the little fox luck anyway.

Daryl breaks the rusted padlock on the farmhouse door. Inside, a thick layer of dust coats every surface. It looks like the house was locked up to keep it safe for its owners' return, but clearly no one ever came home.

They raid the cellar by flashlight, opening dusty jars of preserves and eating greedily with their bare, dirty fingers, packing up as much as they can carry. It's a lucky find; they discover batteries and a box of matches in the kitchen, and Beth finds a black hoodie, the logo of a high school football team peeling off of it. It's too big and smells vaguely of mildew and mice, but it's warm, and now it's hers.

This time, there's no talk of staying put for a while. They rest in shifts, Beth sleeping in a back bedroom, empty except for a spare metal bed in the corner. Daryl keeps watch, sitting with his back to the front door, nailed shut behind him.

Beth's belly aches all night, and she stares at the bedroom ceiling, wondering if the preserves were too old. Wondering how long they can count on finding food other people neglected to take along. Wondering how long it'll be until one of them catches a parasite from creek water, or steps on a rusty nail, or falls through rotting floorboards, or encounters any of the thousands of things that could go disastrously wrong.

When the sun rises, steaming the dew off the leaves, they are already packed and leaving the farmhouse behind, disappearing into the silent woods.

They don't take chances anymore.

* * *

Beth pulls the fur from a rabbit she's caught, splits its skin and yanks the pelt over its head like a sweater. It's almost amusing, the skinny little naked dead rabbit, staring up at her. Blood and tufts of hair stick to her hands. She can't find it in her to feel more than a twinge of sadness for the rabbit; she's too hungry. A few feet from her, Daryl is skinning his own rabbit.

There are moments when Beth thinks that she must have died somewhere along the way because the woman she is now feels so unlike the girl she once was. Before. Long ago, now. That girl would have cried and turned away from the ugliness. From the sad and discomfiting truth that survival often requires taking something from someone else.

But Beth has become oddly comfortable with the idea. Things being what they are, she doesn't see she has much of a choice.

"We should figure out how to tan the pelts," Beth muses, stroking the rabbit's soft fur. She thinks of the oncoming winter, of living outside. Georgia is hardly the tundra, but the thought of spending another winter sleeping on the ground makes her apprehensive. "Do you know how?"

"Mm," Daryl grunts in response, flopping his rabbit's pelt so that it lands with a fleshy slap in the dirt beside hers.

"What's that mean?" Beth asks, eyeing him. "Yes, no, maybe?"

"Gotta be settled down someplace for that," he says with a shake of his head. "You need a shed, equipment, space for the pelts to cure." He pauses, wiping his bloody hands off on the thighs of his ragged pants. "We oughta find a town."

Beth frowns. "Like… to live in?"

"Naw," Daryl says, giving his head a shake. "Winter's comin'. We're gonna need better clothes, better supplies." He pauses, chewing his lip thoughtfully.

Beth moves closer to the fire as Daryl arranges the gutted rabbits over the low flames. She pulls her knees up to her chest, hugging them, and a puff of steam escapes her mouth. Daryl's right; they won't be able to make do outdoors without more supplies. Not for much longer.

She peers down at her boots, filthy and scuffed, the leather starting to wear thin in a couple of spots. They used to be beautiful, the dyed leather and embroidery so lovely. They'd been a gift from her parents on her sixteenth birthday. She'd gotten her gold necklace, too, and a book of sheet music for the piano. There was lemon layer cake, and her whole family grinning at her in the candlelight while she made a wish she no longer remembers.

The memory feels like a relic from another world, another life, another girl. And of course, in a way, it is.

Judging by the colour of the trees, Beth guesses her eighteenth birthday passed sometime last month.

"I should find some new boots," she says, her voice disturbing the quiet of twilight that has fallen around them. Daryl looks up from the fire, peers at her feet as the firelight flickers across his face.

"Mm," he agrees, "ain't gonna keep you warm for much longer."

The rabbits cook quickly, skinny as they are, and soon Beth is picking every morsel of meat from the thin bones, cracking them her fingers and sucking out the marrow.

When they finish, they throw the bones on the fire and Daryl places a few more lightweight sticks on top. The fire crackles to life, the flames licking at the bones.

Daryl sits back down, but closer to Beth this time. He reaches into a pocket in his vest and pops something into his mouth. Beth eyes him as he leans back against the log behind them, stretching his legs out in front, his hands behind his head.

"Is that a cinnamon stick?" Beth asks, peering at him. The little brown stick dangles from his mouth like a cigarette.

The only response she gets is a nod as he moves the cinnamon stick to the other side of his mouth, munching away at it.

"Is it good?"

"'S'fine," he says.

"Well… can I have one?"

Daryl slants a look at her. He pulls a plastic bottle from his vest, several brown sticks of cinnamon rattling around inside. Beth almost laughs. He removes a stick and hands it to her.

Beth holds the cinnamon stick in her palm for a moment, then holds it up and places it to her lips. The strength of the flavour surprises her, touching her tongue with bitter, pungent woodiness. It smells much better than it tastes, but there's something satisfying about the strength of the taste, something pleasing about the bitterness.

They stare into the fire as it consumes the remains of their dinner and slowly burns itself down, as they suck on their cinnamon sticks in mutual silence.

"I hope they're keepin' warm," Beth says. An owl hoots nearby and Daryl turns his head to look at her. "Whoever made it out. I hope they found somewhere good to hole up, somewhere safe. Maybe even somewhere permanent. Maybe -"

"Don't," Daryl says, his tone gruff.

Beth falls silent. She knows that hope doesn't work the same way for him that it does for her. It gives her strength to hope, to believe that their family is still out there, that surely some of them _must_ have survived. For her, it helps. For him, she suspects it's only an empty fantasy, and a painful reminder of how he believes he has failed.

"We don't know for sure," Beth says softly, hugging her knees tighter to her chest and resting her chin on her knee. "We _don't_. Not yet. I like to think about them, you know? I need that, sometimes. Just picturin' everybody sittin' around a fire, thinkin' about us, just like we're thinkin' about them. Maybe they're doin' that right now and we just don't know it."

"Maybe," Daryl says. He shrugs a shoulder. "Ain't likely."

"Yeah, but... What _if_ , you know?"

Daryl nods, says nothing more, and Beth realizes that he has probably never acted on a hopeful "what if" in his life. All that matters is what is. That's the only thing that's real.

Beth exhales, tries to hold on to the faith that keeps her going. The faith that somehow, someday, everything's gonna be okay again. That somewhere, the group of sundry strangers who made a family at the end of the world still survives.

"I'll take first watch," he says. He presses his knee pointedly against her thigh. She glances over and he is looking at her with this soft, uncertain look, like he's trying to tell her something without speaking. Beth smiles. He can be so crude, so harsh, such a _dick_ , and then not. "Get some sleep," he insists.

"Okay," she says. "But promise me you'll actually wake me up to swap this time. You need to sleep, too."

Daryl's only response is a noncommittal grunt. With a gentle roll of her eyes, Beth pulls her pack close to use as a lumpy pillow. She curls up on her side there, her head by his hip. She hears him sigh, and shift, and lean back against the tree trunk behind him.

The last she's aware of as she drifts into sleep is the hooting of a nearby owl and the sharp lingering taste of cinnamon on the tip of her tongue.


	3. the town

When they find a town, it's one of those snooty little places that got built up around a hot spring over a century ago. It's populated, now, by bed & breakfasts in fancy old houses on wide, treed streets and little shops full of expensive clothing and jewelry rather than useful things. It isn't the kind of place Daryl ever spent much time in before the turn. He remembers driving through a similar neighbourhood in Marietta once in his old truck, circling the block while Merle was inside one of the houses, cramming valuables into a duffel bag.

Regardless of his aversion to the place, Daryl figures anywhere there's been people, there's bound to be something left behind that he and Beth might use. It's worth a look, at least.

 _Pickton_ , a blue-painted sign by the side of the highway announces, _Home of Historic Pickton Hot Springs!_

They approach the town by walking parallel to the main highway, picking their way through the woods until the trees thin and give way to newly paved, curving streets lined with cavernous McMansions and wide patios of expensive stone.

They meet back up with the highway where it becomes the main street into downtown, and there they find an enormous blockade constructed of cars and sections of fencing. It's tumbling down, full of gaps, either overrun or unfinished – Daryl can't tell. A piece of rusting, corrugated metal dangles awkwardly off the structure, swaying in the breeze in slow, creaking rasps. Otherwise, the town is silent. Abandoned, like everywhere else.

But not ransacked. The streets are strewn with garbage and fallen leaves and branches. Some street signs have been knocked or blown over, and there are empty cars and broken glass on the pavement. But aside from the dirty windows and peeling paint, the stores appear untouched.

Daryl frowns. Nowhere's like that. It unsettles him, but their food stash has been reduced to Slim Jims and Twinkies and whatever they can hunt, so they don't have much choice.

"Weird," Beth mutters. Daryl looks over at her. She's frowning, her thumbs looped in the straps of her backpack. She glances at him. "Don't you think it's weird? Did they try to protect the town, or just leave, or…?"

"Dunno," Daryl replies, worrying the inside of his lip between his teeth.

"Think it's some kinda trap?" she asks, fair eyebrows drawn together, her forehead creased. Daryl meets her steady, wary gaze. They haven't talked about the funeral home again, but Daryl sees they both privately drew the same conclusion. That place wasn't just left that way, it was _made_ that way.

"Only one way to find out," he says.

Beth turns in a slow circle, taking in the empty street, the lifelessness. Daryl's eyes pass over the storefront across the way, a realtor's office. Yellowed listings are still taped to the inside of the front window, slowly peeling away. Daryl can just make out the red _BANK SEIZURE_ stamps on many of the listings, remembers the news blaring stories about foreclosures and bank failures while he stood in line for smokes at the gas station. It was only a few years ago, but he'd forgotten all about it.

"You ever think about the people who lived in places like this, and died, and how their families and friends probably never even found out?" Beth says softly. It sounds like a question, but somehow Daryl knows it isn't, so he says nothing, just waits for her to continue. "I keep thinking about all the stories that die with people. All the things I wish I'd asked Mama, or Shawn, or Dad, or Maggie, that now I'll never - they're just _gone_."

Daryl watches her profile, sees her jaw clench, the delicate muscles of her throat working as though she's swallowing a lump in her throat.

"I keep wonderin' who'll tell our stories," she says.

 _Nobody_ , Daryl thinks. He doesn't say it. Instead, he reaches out and cups her elbow.

"Ain't gotta worry 'bout no stories right now, Greene," he says. "Just gotta worry 'bout findin' some food for them hollow legs of yours. Don't think I can stand another night bein' kept awake by that noisy damn bear you call a stomach."

A surprised laugh escapes Beth's throat and she turns to him. Her hair swishes over her shoulder, the breeze catching a long golden thread between her chapped lips. Her eyes gleam, and Daryl's fingers itch with the urge to free her hair from her open, smiling mouth.

"Let's not be stupid today, okay?" she says, raising a sardonic eyebrow at him.

Daryl scoffs. "Sure as shit," he replies, and she smiles.

They continue down what a crooked sign says is Main Street, past a florist and an autobody shop and a gas station, and several boutiques with fancy black dresses and hand-blown glass vases and expensive scented candles still displayed in their grimy front windows.

"There," Beth says, pointing further down the street at a larger store. _Thompson's Hardware and Sporting Goods, since 1925_ , the green sign proclaims. They approach the low building and cup their hands around their eyes to peer in the wide windows. It's dark inside, of course, but there's no movement or sound. Daryl glances at Beth as she looks at him. She shrugs, as if to say, _why not?_

Holding his crossbow up, Daryl opens the front door and they begin to move into the store. Although the place isn't completely picked over, it's clear that someone has been through here; many of the shelves are empty.

But there's no sign of walkers or humans at all, so they settle in for a thorough search of whatever is left.

They split up, taking opposite sides of the store. Daryl picks his way through the guns and ammo, most of which is already gone. He finds a couple of boxes of bullets for the pistols they held onto from the cops, stashes them in his pack, and moves on. Further down the aisle, he finds a dark blue backpack for himself and a tin of grease for his bow.

In the next aisle he finds a pair of hiking boots, holds them up. He frowns; he has no clue what size Beth's feet are, but they seem like they could fit, so he takes them. He grabs several pairs of thick socks for them both.

There isn't much else to be had as he wanders down the aisles, and so he whistles to Beth to meet him back up at the front.

He waits by the cash register and she appears a few moments later, winding her way around some toppled shopping carts. She has a bright grin on her face as she approaches him, and the moment is so _normal_ , like he's waiting on his girl to finish up her half of their grocery list and meet him at the cashier, that he's thrown.

Daryl frowns. Grocery shopping, _his girl_ \- that never was his normal. In fact it's downright _weird_ for this to feel normal. And yet.

"This place is great," Beth enthuses as she walks up, swinging her pack around and dropping it on the counter. She opens it and removes a length of nylon rope, a spool of fishing line, a pack each of hooks and lures, and a whetstone.

"Couldn't find any fishin' poles," she says, "but we can make our own. My dad made me one, once, out of a little birch sapling. Plus, this way it's less to carry."

"Good thinkin'," Daryl replies, pleased at her haul. It's all smart stuff; useful and small and light. He lifts the boots up and puts them on the counter. "Wasn't sure what size y'are, but thought these might do. You can always wear extra socks if they're too big, or stuff some newspaper in the toe..." he trails off awkwardly, looking away from her.

"They look _perfect_ ," Beth says, leaning down to pull her boots off. She sets them on the counter beside the hiking boots and pauses, regarding them. She gives a little sigh. "I know it ain't practical to keep my old boots, but…"

It's not, Daryl agrees, and almost says so, but something soft and sad in her expression stops him. She doesn't need him to tell her what's what. He watches as she brushes her fingers down the worn, faded leather of her cowgirl boots, pausing to rub her thumb against one soft, stained toe.

"They're the last thing Mama ever gave me," she says softly. "My dad too, I guess."

Daryl says nothing, lets her feel her way through the grief and nostalgia on her own, standing there in her socks, one toe peeking out from a hole in the greyed, threadbare fabric. After a moment, she gives a little huff and seems to shake herself.

"Maybe someone else who comes along'll need these more than I do," she says, giving a firm little nod. "Maybe they don't have nothin' on their feet at all."

Beth leans down, then, and pulls on her new boots, lacing them up over the cuffs of her fraying jeans. She straightens up, leaning her weight first on one foot, and then the other. She turns and takes a few steps away from him, then back. She grins.

"They _are_ perfect. Just enough room for warm socks," she says, smiling big and bright at him. "Thanks, Daryl."

And then she's taking another step, and another, and she's right in front of him, grasping his forearm and pushing into his space, pressing the briefest brush of a kiss to the scruff of his jaw.

"Weren't nothin'," he grumbles, barely resisting the urge to step back from her, or worse, push her away.

"It's not _nothin'_ ," she replies, rocking back on her heels, still smiling at him. She lingers a moment longer, just standing there, smiling away at him like she's lost her damn mind, and Daryl's face might actually be on fire. Her eyes narrow, thoughtful, and he can see her examining his face like she's trying to figure him out. His stomach rolls over.

Beth watches him a moment longer, her measuring gaze softening into something gentler, something that feels less like she can see right inside him.

"Found somethin' for you, too," she says, then, taking a step away from him, back towards her pack. She produces a jacket, plaid, all earthy greens and browns and thin accents of fiery orange and red. It's lined with sheepskin, thick and warm.

"Oh," he breathes, the strength of his reaction surprising him. He _really_ likes it; it's exactly the one he'd have picked for himself, the one he'd have wanted real bad and not had the cash for before. Out of practicality he'd never been particular about his clothes, but he wasn't above wanting a thing when it spoke to him.

"I know you're probably fine with what you've got, but that jean jacket ain't real thick and it's gettin' cold at night, now. There were camo ones and stuff - maybe you'd like those ones more? - but I just thought -" Beth is saying, shrugging and rambling a bit. She wants him to like it, he realises with a little jolt. She didn't just find him a jacket, she took time to _choose_ a jacket. She wondered which one he'd pick for himself, looked for him in a row of stupid jackets. She's blushing, and Daryl realises she's nervous. Something like delight bubbles up in his chest and he can't help it, he smiles.

"S'real nice," he says, taking it from her. He drops his crossbow and shrugs it on, zips it up, pulling his vest on over top.

"Looks good on you," Beth says.

Daryl scoffs, shouldering the crossbow once more. They split their loot up between the two packs, ensuring that each of them has some glass to start a fire, and some food, in case they're separated.

"This is great," Beth says as she arranges the inside of her pack. "We'll be able to carry way more food now, between the two of us. I'm gonna get so buff this winter, carrying this stuff."

"C'mon," Daryl says, giving her elbow a tug and nodding towards the doors.

"So long, boots," Beth says softly as they leave, almost under her breath, almost too low for Daryl to hear.

They head back out onto Main Street and continue down the road towards the town square, passing churches and bars and a drug store. As they pass in front of the town's library, Daryl pauses, a distant sound piquing his interest.

"You hear that?" Beth asks, before he has the chance to ask her the same question.

"Yeah," Daryl replies. Beth stops as well, and they both listen. A gentle breeze blows leaves and loose debris across the pavement, and there's the sound of birdsong nearby. And somewhere, the low groan of a herd.

Daryl's grip on the crossbow tightens, and he sees Beth's hand slide down to grab her knife out of its sheath. Her eyes meet his, and she nods once, decisive. She, like him, would rather find them and see what they're up against than wait to be caught off guard.

They follow the sound of the herd.

Heading down one of the side streets in the general direction of the sound, the smell hits them. It's like walking into a physical wall of stench, the musk of rotting corpses hanging thick in the air.

"Oh my god," Beth groans, her face screwing up in disgust.

"God _damn_ ," Daryl agrees. He breathes through his mouth but it doesn't help much; it's the kind of smell you can taste.

They carry on, following the sound and the smell of the walkers, until they find an old community pool surrounded by a tall chain link fence. Approaching the fence, Daryl sees that the pool is drained of water but teeming with walkers, dozens of them milling about and bumping into each other in one large, ungainly horde.

"Don't make no fuckin' sense," Daryl mutters. The walkers are beyond rotted, most missing limbs and ears and noses and eyes. Walkers that are little more than legless torsos drag themselves between the feet of the others, gradually being trampled into a leathery, decaying mass. He shakes his head. "Probably been here since the start, baking out in the sun this whole time."

"Look, someone took all the ladders off to keep 'em in. Someone was trying to help," Beth says. She's staring down into the swimming pool, too, her eyes wide. "Maybe they penned 'em up, waitin' on a cure."

"Mm," Daryl agrees. The stench wafting up from the walkers is powerful, and he takes a step back from the fence.

"You think it's stupid," Beth says. He glances at her, remembering how she looked that bright summer day in front of the barn, weeping over her dead mama. The way they had to pull her off, even as the monster wearing her mama's own skin attacked her. Daryl remembers thinking she was indeed stupid, that the whole family was touched.

"Naw, it ain't stupid," he replies. "Didn't know no better, is all."

"We should put 'em down," Beth says.

"Ain't got no ammo left, and I ain't real keen on climbin' down there, neither."

"You're right," she sighs. She turns away from the pit, pulling on Daryl's sleeve. "Come on. If we can't do nothin' for 'em, let's just go."

They walk back up to Main Street and continue in the direction they'd been headed. The town square is like something out of an old movie, and must once have been a sight, with its black wrought-iron fence and lush lawns and red-and-white bandstand. The lawns are wild with tangled weeds and overgrown grass, and every painted surface peels and bleaches in the sun.

On one side are the courthouse and town hall, and across the way is a grocery store. With its one broken window, it's the most ransacked place in town. They decide with one long look at each other that it's still worth investigating, and they climb in through the busted metal window frame, broken glass crunching beneath their boots.

It's a mess inside. Seems whatever attempt at harmonious communal survival that had existed in this place at some point went to shit. Or people panicked. It's impossible to know, with no one left to say.

A man can only read what signs remain and fill in the gaps with whatever story suits him.

Daryl follows Beth, and they wander down dusty linoleum aisles lined with grimy, powder-coated shelves. Only odds and ends are left; boxes of scouring pads and packs of colourful crazy straws, heaps of cardboard boxes and torn plastic packaging, enormous clumps of dust all over. They make their way to the back of the store and find the grey metal doors to the stockroom chained shut.

"Dang," Beth mutters, resting her fingers lightly on the padlock for a moment. She rubs her sleeve against the cloudy window in the door, peers inside. "Looks like there might be some pallets of stuff back there."

"Hold up," Daryl says, grabbing a large fire extinguisher fixed to the wall by the door. Hefting it up, he lines the end of the canister up with the padlock before slamming it down. The bang it makes echoes through the empty store and rattles the doors. With a grunt, Daryl lifts the canister and hits the padlock again, and a third time, before the cheap lock springs apart and the chain goes slack.

Beth knocks the chain free and drops it to the ground, pushing the door open. Setting the extinguisher aside, Daryl follows her, crossbow in hand. The noise will have attracted any walkers lurking, but it's silent. Beth gives him a nod, and they start to explore.

The large room is dusty and still, illuminated only by the sunlight slanting in the high windows. Beth walks ahead of him into one of the sunbeams, sending dust motes swirling around her bright head.

She approaches a pallet of plastic-wrapped cardboard boxes before them. Pulling out her knife, she cuts the plastic, peeling away layers of packaging to reveal dozens of boxes of baby formula.

"Oh," she breathes, staring, the knife still clutched in her hand. "This woulda been such a good find."

Daryl swallows, watching the way Beth's face falls. _Woulda been._

Couldn't something as simple as a damn supply run go easy on them? Couldn't the grief let up for even that long without reminding them?

"It still will be," Beth says, nodding and running her fingers along the cardboard. "Just for someone else."

"C'mon," Daryl says, ghosting a hand over her shoulder. She turns her head to meet his eyes, and her long ponytail trails over his knuckles, sending goose pimples prickling their way up his arm. She blinks at him and nods.

They explore the stockroom and find that much of the food was picked over before the place was chained up. Daryl wonders if someone planned to come back for what was left, mostly big cans of lard and flats of tomato sauce and jars of pickled onions and watermelon rind. A haul that would have had him whooping for joy back at the prison when he and Michonne and Glenn could have filled the cars and trucks up.

Now, it's just a waste.

Daryl thinks again of the funeral home, of how safe the place had seemed. About how badly he wanted just to _stop_ , to rest a while, to catch their breath. To let Beth rest. Let her be still and grieve for real, in that place where death was still something to be treated with some decency. He wanted that for her.

He wants that for her, still.

"I guess it's better than nothin'," Beth says. He turns; she's stowing cans in her pack.

Daryl does the same, and when they are loaded down with as many cans and jars as they can carry, they leave the grocery store and walk in silence back the way they came, towards the housing development on the outskirts of town.

They pick a cul-de-sac preciously named Peachtree Crescent, and when Beth points to a sage green house with a red SUV parked haphazardly on the lawn, Daryl nods and readies his crossbow.

The house is empty but for a troupe of raccoons who scatter when Daryl sends a bolt through the biggest one. It's a large house that must not have been built long before the turn; the kitchen still looks like the displays Daryl used to scoff at in Home Depot, all granite countertops and stainless steel appliances. There's no evidence that anyone tried to defend the place, only that it was abandoned. Half-filled suitcases and boxes are scattered around the living room, as though the occupants had to leave in the middle of packing. A thick coat of dust covers every surface, disturbed only by the scrabbly prints of rodent feet and plenty of mouse shit. Daryl finds some boards and pieces of plywood in the garage and secures the entire main floor, covering every window.

They roast the raccoon on the back patio, in the stone fire pit, next to the hugest barbecue Daryl's ever seen, a brushed steel monster of a thing. They eat the greasy meat with their bare hands as the sun goes down beyond the treeless suburban skyline that leans against the horizon like a low mountain range.

Inside, after their breath turns foggy in the cool air and their fire has died away, they each claim a portion of the large sectional in the living room. They stretch out, passing a jar of maraschino cherries back and forth, the only light the flickering tea lights on the coffee table.

Beth writes in her diary, scribbling away with it propped against her knees, humming softly to herself. Daryl lies back on one arm with the other resting on his full belly, staring up at the ceiling, feeling the luxurious comfort of the musty couch beneath his aching back, and the only thing he can think of to want is a cigarette.

"Today was a good day," Beth says, after a long period of silence. Daryl cranes his head to look over at her.

"Huh?"

"It was a good day," she repeats. The tea lights cast her in warm rose-gold, her hair half falling out of her messy ponytail, little braid peeking out of the waves, like she's trying to wear three hairstyles at once. Her eyes shine in the candlelight. "We found some supplies, got food for the road, caught dinner, found a cozy place to stay. That's a pretty damn good day, if you ask me."

"Guess so," Daryl agrees, his hand dropping down to graze his crossbow where it rests against the couch.

"I'm going to write down everything that happened today," Beth says, head bent over her green notebook. Daryl thinks of her writing the thank you note, the same pleased half-smile on her lips.

"Why?" he asks.

"So I can tell our story," she replies, without looking up. "The story of Beth and Daryl in the wilderness."

Daryl means to scoff, but the way she says _Beth-'n'-Daryl_ all rolled together like that, like two things that used to be separate but are now one, kinda throws him. "Yeah? Who's gonna read it?" he asks.

"My millions of fans," Beth says, arching an eyebrow at him. She taps the end of the pen against her pursed lips. "If you don't wanna be included, I can always give you a fake name."

Daryl scoffs, watching as the corner of Beth's mouth twitches behind the pen when she tries not to smile. They fall silent again, Beth returning to her writing. Daryl watches her, takes in the look of concentration on her face, the crease between her eyebrows.

Daryl stares at the top of her head for a long moment, thinking about how empty the town is, how untouched, with dozens of vacant, comfortable homes. They'd have everything they needed, their own little fucked up suburban dream at the end of the world.

He thinks of her writing in her notebook another night, another house, another halo of candlelight, the same warm sensation filling his chest until there was no room left to breathe.

 _Contentment._ He thinks that's the right word. This feeling of ease, of gentle silence that is allowed simply to _be_ , to settle around them like a blanket. But also to be broken now and again in the best way - by Beth's murmurs to herself, the sound of her fingertips and her pen brushing across the paper.

He feels the words forming on his lips, wanting to suggest it again, to talk about staying. About being here together.

 _We'll just make it work._

But the peace and quiet of that place had been a lie. And if it's not a lie in this place, it's at least temporary. Fragile. Dangerous. Impossible to trust.

"I'll take first watch," she says then, glancing up at him. "You should get some rest. We're probably gonna want to get an early start if we're gonna scavenge some more before we leave, right?"

Daryl merely hums in agreement, dropping his head back against the couch to stare at the ceiling. He feels her eyes on him, and his face heats. Her scrutiny makes him uncomfortably aware of just having done the same to her. He glances over at her, and sees Beth's smiling at him, that same night-time smile, all soft edges and warmth.

"It's okay, really. I can keep watch. You don't have to worry," she says, mistaking the source of his discomfort.

"Ain't worried," he replies, looking away from her. Daryl stares at the ceiling and chews the ragged cuticle on his thumb. Finally, Beth's eyes drop, and he exhales.

"Good," she says.

Daryl closes the heavy lids of his eyes and lets the scratching of Beth's pen on paper and her soft humming lull him to sleep like white noise.

 _The story of Beth and Daryl in the wilderness._


	4. the culvert

Beth wakes alone, blinking up at the stippled white ceiling of a stranger's living room.

She shifts, groaning as her muscles stretch, to look around the room. Soft sunlight filters in through the gaps between the boards Daryl fastened to the windows, bathing the room in a hazy glow. Beth wants nothing more than to turn over and go right back to sleep. The couch might as well be a king-sized feather bed for how comfortable it feels after so many nights sleeping on the hard ground.

Beth hears the creak of a floorboard and the sound of the sliding glass door in the kitchen gliding open and shut. Grudgingly, she sits up, pushing the blanket off of her. She glances down at it, fingering the wide, crocheted loops of candy apple red and sky blue yarn. It's cheerful and a little tacky, like something her Nana would have made. She spares a thought for her father's sweet, tough mother, the sparrowish woman who taught Beth to play the piano and lived to see 97 years before dying in her sleep when Beth was nine.

She stares down at the afghan. She doesn't remember finding it or pulling it over herself when she woke Daryl to take his turn to watch in the middle of the night. He must have thrown it over her in her sleep.

Standing, she stretches her arms over her head and wanders out into the hallway. Through the large glass doors, she sees Daryl standing on the patio, smoke rising around him from the stone fire pit. He crouches down to poke the fire with a stick, nudging at the crackling branches.

Beth observes him for several moments. He rises, looks out over the yard. He cocks his head slightly before turning and looking back through the smudged glass door, right at her. He reminds her, in that moment, of the half-feral black barn cats that roamed the Greene farm, whose keen awareness of their surroundings made it impossible for Beth to ever sneak up and pounce on them for a forced cuddle.

Daryl meets her eyes and a little smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. He nods, and Beth grins at him.

"Mornin'," she says as she pushes open the door and steps out into the crisp bright air.

"Mornin'," he replies, breath escaping his mouth in a cloud. He nudges at the stone base of the fire pit with his booted toe. "Was hopin' to have some breakfast goin' before you got up."

"What's on the menu?" she asks, pulling her hands into her hoodie sleeves to keep her fingers warm.

"Beans and pickled watermelon rind," Daryl replies.

"Dang," Beth sighs. "I wanted a Belgian waffle with mile-high whipped cream and strawberries, but I guess beans and pickled watermelon are almost as good." A smile pulls at the corner of Daryl's mouth, and Beth grins.

"Tell you what," Daryl says, setting the stick aside and shoving his hands in his pockets, "next Waffle House we see, we'll stop. Just for you."

Beth snorts and Daryl smiles, and Beth thoroughly enjoys the sight of the tips of his ears turning dark pink. She likes the subtle little reactions she can wrest out of him sometimes. He's been so serious since they fled the prison, so stoic, so that even the briefest glimpse of lightheartedness in him ignites a matching joy in her.

Daryl glances at her hands, bundled into fists in her sleeves, and frowns. "You cold? C'mere," he says, giving her sleeve a tug to pull her closer to the fire. He moves her in front of him, his hands clasping her elbows. There's a strange pause where he's standing behind her, breath ruffling the hair on the top of her head, and it almost feels like he might stay there, might wrap his arms around her and pull her back against his chest. Beth wonders just how pink _her_ ears are turning.

But Daryl steps back from her, puts space between them and stands beside her. Beth releases a tight breath.

Holding her hands up to the heat of the fire, the flames thawing the chill from her fingertips, Beth watches as Daryl pries open two cans of beans and sets them on the grate. He pulls the jar of watermelon rind out of his pack and unscrews the lid with a metallic pop. He holds it out to her.

"Thanks," Beth says, fishing out a pale piece of rind. It's tart and sweet and vinegary on her tongue, and the taste reminds her of home, of Patricia's preserves, of winter.

"Mornings ain't as nice as they were a few weeks ago," Daryl says, pocketing the closed jar and holding his hands out to the fire.

"No kiddin'," Beth says, rubbing her hands against her upper arms to scrub away the chill. "You wanna know one nice thing about the weather gettin' colder, though?"

"What'sat?"

"No bugs," she says, smiling. Daryl just makes a soft "pfft" noise in reply, and Beth grins. It seems like mere days since they were sweltering in the woods, being bitten raw each night by swarms of mosquitoes. Now each day is shorter than the one before it, the bugs have all gone, and there's a hint of frost in the air when morning comes.

"You sleep all right?" Daryl asks, without looking up from the fire. Beth glances at him.

"I guess," she replies, "why?"

"Nothin', you was just thrashin' around a lot, talkin' in your sleep."

"Oh. Just dreamin', I guess." She shrugs, slightly embarrassed, and decides not to ask exactly what she said.

Daryl nods, a subtle look of relief crossing his face.

They're quiet as they eat the beans side by side on beige plastic adirondack chairs. Beth looks out at the yard, at the overgrown grass, at the large houses packed close together on every side, pool slides and pergolas peeking over the tops of the tall fences. There's not a single tree in the neighbourhood.

"You ever wanna live in this kinda place?" Daryl asks, then. Beth looks over at him. He's squinting out at the dark windows of the other houses, his spoon gripped in his fist. He glances at her, and Beth suspects he might be asking her another question altogether.

"What, like when I pictured what my life was gonna be?" she asks. He nods. Beth considers it, frowning as she thinks back, tries to recall what she imagined for herself at 16, before the world fell apart. It's hard to remember. She put all that away somewhere, months ago. Now it feels like a recollection from a past life.

"I wanted to move to Nashville," she says softly, looking down. She pokes the tip of her spoon at the few remaining beans swimming in sugary brown sauce at the bottom of the can. "Live in a crappy little apartment, write songs, play coffeehouses and bars. Get _discovered_." She rolls her eyes; her girlhood dreams are embarrassingly trite and naive to her now.

"You woulda," Daryl says, scraping at the bottom of his can, peering into it. He glances up at her and a half-smile curves his mouth. "I've heard you sing; you're pretty good."

Beth turns her face away to hide her pleased smile. What would have felt like faint praise from almost anyone else feels like much more from Daryl. "What about you?" she asks. "Did you wanna live somewhere like this?"

Daryl makes a soft, derisive noise, tosses his empty can into the fire. "Hell no. Too many people crowded 'round, watchin' you all the time. Gives me the creeps."

Beth isn't surprised; he looks incongruous here even now, with the place easing quietly into ruin. But there's something about the way his mouth twists as he rejects the idea - places like this rejected him first. Beth scoops the last few beans into her mouth, licks the spoon clean, and thinks about all the things she wants to ask him in that moment.

 _Where did you grow up? What was it like? Do you miss anyone from those days? Did it scare you, when your dad would shoot things inside the house? What was your mom like? How old were you when you finally got away?_

 _Why on earth do you stay with me?_

"Let's get crackin'," Daryl says, standing up. Beth blinks up at him, startled from her thoughts. "Gonna go see if there's anythin' worth keepin' in the garage, the basement."

"I'll check upstairs," Beth replies, glad to have a job to do. It pushes her gnawing thoughts aside.

They go back inside the house and split up. Beth heads upstairs, keeping her footsteps as light as she can. It's more reflex than choice, now, moving quietly. She doesn't need to be; they cleared the entire house last night before locking it down. But there's something about poking through people's homes, pawing through their things, that still feels wrong to her. It still feels like the owners are about to appear out of a back room, demanding to know what she thinks she's doing.

Beth wanders into the first bedroom at the top of the stairs. It's a teenage girl's room, crammed with things, untidy, the walls covered floor to ceiling with posters and drawings. A little TV table under the window creaks beneath the weight of scented candles and bottles of nail polish. Dozens of photos of grinning girls adorn the wall over the desk. The bed is unmade, and clothing and shoes and books litter the floor. Beth smiles. The mess is not evidence of a struggle, she knows. It's only evidence that the space belonged to a teenage girl as she exploded into adulthood. Beth was tidier than the girl who once occupied this room, but the riot of colour and music and books and _life_ is painfully familiar.

Digging through the closet, Beth is delighted to find a pair of jeans that fit her, as well as a couple of long-sleeved t-shirts and a pair of leggings. Most of the clothes more or less fit her, in fact, but there's only so much stuff it makes sense to carry, even with cold weather approaching. So, Beth changes into the jeans, stows the t-shirts and leggings in her backpack, and leaves the rest.

The pack of rainbow hair bands and the unopened stick of deodorant she finds in the girl's nightstand spread a grin across Beth's face, and she shoves them in her pack.

Searching the other bedrooms and the bathrooms, she finds a half-full bottle of antibiotics, a roll of gauze, a blue flannel shirt that might fit Daryl, and a few books of matches.

When she descends the stairs to the main floor, she finds Daryl at the front door, removing the boards he nailed on the night before.

"Find anythin' good?" she asks.

Daryl nods, grimacing as he braces to yank the last board off the doorframe. "Found a box of ammo for the handguns. They took their guns with 'em, though."

"Dang," Beth says, watching him as he opens the front door. A chilly gust of wind blows into the foyer, belying the cheerful sunshine that lights the hallway. Daryl adjusts the backpack and the crossbow on his back, and looks at her.

"There's more houses to scavenge," Beth says, looking around the neighbourhood. "Might be worth it. What do you wanna do?"

"What do _you_ wanna do?"

"I asked you first."

Daryl glances at her with barely restrained impatience. "I think we oughta keep movin'," he says. He gestures out at the neighbouring houses. "We pick a house and secure it, sure, but what about all the places nearby? Good cover for all kinds of - whatever."

Beth stares out at the other houses, and she sees what he means. They could be watched from so many places, and they'd have no idea. The dark, empty windows of the other houses take on a different appearance to her now, ominous and staring.

"Yeah, okay," she says, and suddenly she wants the cover of trees and the shelter of a little holler somewhere. She wants the soft sound of their boots in the dirt, of the forest's creatures moving through the underbrush. She wants to leave this place.

So they do. They walk out of the cul-de-sac and along what must once have been a lovely paved bike path that curves around the edge of the suburb. It's overgrown, now, with weeds and grass, wild scrubby hedges of chinese elm and honeysuckle. They follow the trail until it ends at a railway crossing.

They cross the tracks, Daryl throwing their bags over the tall chain link fence. He climbs up and over, landing on his feet on the other side with a soft _oof_. He stands up straight and flips his hair out of his eyes, and there's something terribly _young_ about the motion. Beth wonders if he's always been this way, this jarring blend of confidence and uncertainty, and she tries to imagine him at her age. Was he cocky and brash? A sullen loner? Awkward and defensive? Loyal and kind? He's all of these things, she's learned, and she suspects he's many things more. She hopes he'll keep showing her, even if it's one small glimpse at a time.

Beth climbs the fence, swinging her leg over the other side to climb down, and she jolts in surprise when she feels Daryl's hands grab her hips. She lets go of the fence, lets Daryl ease her safely to the ground.

"I _can_ climb a fence on my own, you know," she says gently, turning around as she straightens her hoodie. His cheeks are pink and he shrugs.

"I know," he replies, turning away from her.

They follow the path cut by the railway for a while. The only obstacle they meet is a fallen dead tree that's downed a portion of the fence. Beth walks along the steel rail like a balance beam, watching Daryl search the ditches and the trees beyond for squirrels or rabbits, crossbow in hand.

"We should remember where this place is," Beth says. "Might be worth comin' back to, sometime, you know? When we have more people to fill the houses, maybe."

"Hm," Daryl replies, neutral. "I'll remember where it is."

Clouds drift across the sky as they walk, blowing slowly together until the sun is hidden and the sky has turned cold grey. The wind picks up, and Beth shivers inside her hoodie. She wonders if it's November yet, or still October.

When the rail line crosses over a creek, Daryl points at the treeline with his bow.

They descend the gravel bank and disappear between the trees.

* * *

Beth dreams.

She dreams about the time before the turn, of harvest time and church and algebra and dances and trail rides in the woods. She dreams of her life now, of running and scrabbling in the dirt. Living like a wild animal, finding a strange sort of comfort in the shade of the trees, in the dirt beneath her fingernails, in the smell of pine sap and rotting leaves.

But she dreams most of all about the prison, about singing to Judith and cuddling her close, about all of them sitting outside in the courtyard with plates of roasted rabbit and fresh cucumbers on their knees, about Lori's kind smile, and the way Daddy always knew _just_ what to say to make her feel like everything was going to be all right.

Beth dreams about things that have happened, things that haven't, things that now never could. Like the orchards and grain fields she wanted to see stretch out to the prison's fences in every direction, the smokehouse Daryl and Rick were going to build for when they slaughtered the hogs, the birthdays and holidays she imagined, that would offer them all reprieve from the nightmare of the outside world.

 _We can live here.  
We can live here for the rest of our lives._

Beth is woken by the sensation of Daryl's hand covering her mouth. He's holding her tight from behind.

"Walkers," he whispers in her ear, his voice no more than a breath stirring her hair. Goose pimples break out all down her arms and legs as her heart slams against her ribs and adrenaline begins to pump through her veins.

Beth nods quickly against his hand and Daryl releases her. She knows better than to speak. She turns toward him as silently as she can, resisting the urge to panic and scramble away into the dark woods.

Their fire is long since dead and cold, not even smouldering anymore. Beth can barely see Daryl's face in the dark, can just make out the clouds of foggy breath they pant into the chilly night air.

Daryl makes a gesture to indicate there are at least two of them, and that they're on the other side of the tin can alarm on the far edge of the camp. He points at their few supplies, then jerks his thumb away from the walkers. Beth nods again, and Daryl stands with his crossbow, moving silently across their camp.

Beth throws the backpack on, removes her knife from its sheath and grips it in her right hand, crouching in the darkness as she waits.

She hears the walkers shuffling through the brush, then a soft _thwunk_ as Daryl discharges his crossbow. Beth hears something heavy hit the forest floor in a crash of leaves and branches, followed by a muttered curse from Daryl. He's at her side again, grabbing her hand.

"Too many," he hisses. "C'mon."

They take off into the dark woods at a run. Daryl's grip on her hand is almost crushing as they move. Beth knows they could run easier without holding onto each other, knows Daryl must know it too, but he doesn't let go.

The moon is large and bright and low in the sky, almost a harvest moon. Beth is grateful for the light it reflects into the woods, allowing them to move faster than they would in complete darkness.

"Where are they?" she gasps as they run.

"Where the fuck _ain't_ they?" Daryl snaps back.

They run and run until it hurts to draw breath. Beth's muscles ache with exertion, her head throbs, and dark spots dance before her eyes.

Daryl is the one who stops, finally, skidding to a halt in the fallen leaves where the terrain starts to slope downwards. Beth hears the sound of running water nearby; they're by the edge of a creekbed.

Beth half collapses against the solid trunk of a large oak tree, leaning her head on her arm as she pants for breath. Her lungs burn and her head swims as she struggles to suck in enough oxygen.

 _You're alive_ , she tells herself, hugging the scratchy bark of the tree. _If it hurts, it means you're alive._

Daryl is a foot away, leaning down on his knees and struggling to catch his breath himself. He glances up at her, sees her looking, and for a moment they just stare at each other.

Beth doesn't know how to feel about the fear in his eyes.

A rustle from the nearby underbrush startles them, and Daryl's hand finds hers.

"C'mon," he whispers, giving her a tug.

They crouch down and move as silently as they can through the dark woods, the shuffling of the herd never far behind.

They emerge from the woods at a crossroads. The moonlight is brighter in the open, and Beth watches Daryl as he scours the clearing, searching for a place to hide. He points at a narrow metal culvert that runs under the road. He drops her hand and runs to it, bending down to kick free the rusty grate that covers it. He turns to look back at her, waves her over.

Beth crouches beside him, eyeing the corrugated metal tube doubtfully. The opening is only about two feet across.

"It's narrow enough to keep 'em out," Daryl whispers. "They ain't coordinated enough to follow us in here. Keep quiet and they won't spot us."

Daryl nudges her in the arm, and Beth reluctantly hauls herself feet first into the culvert, lying on her side. Daryl climbs in next to her, pulling the grate into place after him and squeezing in beside her so that they lie face to face.

"Hold up," Daryl grunts, maneuvering his crossbow down to rest behind his bent knees.

It's damp in the culvert, and smells vaguely of something dead and rotting. Beth peers down past their feet, where she can see a pile of leaves and something lumpy at the other grated opening, the likely source of the stench. She looks away.

The sound of their laboured breathing reverberates off the corrugated metal. Beth stays tense, trying to hold herself away from Daryl, trying not to crowd him. But their positions make it impossible and her muscles shake with the effort. Reluctantly she allows her muscles to relax, and lets her head slowly sink to rest on her bent arm, her forehead falling against his chest.

Daryl remains tense beside her, but says nothing. He exhales noisily, his breath brushing her ear, sending goose pimples down her arm. In the distance, a low rumble of thunder rolls across the sky, bowling in their direction.

Minutes later, the herd of walkers catches up with them.

Beth cranes her neck to see through the end of the culvert. The walkers shuffle back and forth across the entrance, seemingly confused that their prey has disappeared but its scent hasn't. Beth supposes the two of them will be safe enough like this, but there's no real barrier between them and the walkers. It reminds Beth of the night they spent in the trunk of that abandoned car, thunder and all, only this is less secure.

Beth trembles, hates that they can still affect her this way.

Daryl's arm falls across her, heavy and solid. Beth freezes as his hand spreads wide between her shoulderblades. He pushes, urging her close to him, and his hand is a warm, solid weight in the middle of her back, holding her close.

The sky flashes with lightning, illuminating the inches between them. Daryl's arm is snug around her middle, and she can feel every breath he takes against her like he's tugging an electric wire behind her bellybutton. Lightning flickers in rapid succession, but there's no thunder, no rain.

Beth presses her face to Daryl's chest, feels the comforting weight of his arm, and waits for the storm to pass.

* * *

Beth wakes to the sound of birds singing, to the morning chill, and to the comforting sensation of being pressed close to Daryl's warm body. She opens her eyes slowly, breathes in the damp, musty air inside the culvert. She shifts, stretching her sore muscles, and takes in her position.

She's snuggled right up to Daryl's back, her nose touching the collar of his jacket. He must have rolled over in his sleep. She can smell the dried sweat and dirt on him, although she supposes she could just be smelling herself. Her arm is thrown across his waist, covered by his forearm, his hand over top of hers. His breathing is deep and even; he's asleep.

Beth props herself up on her elbow and takes a moment to look at him without him scowling at her or turning away or telling her to "quit gawkin' and start walkin'" or whatever gruff brush-off he comes out with.

His face is slack, his long, unkempt hair falling in his eyes. His head is pillowed on the arm beneath him, the other resting on top of hers, loosely holding her hand. His crossbow rests against his legs, loaded and ready to be grabbed at the slightest sign of danger.

It's strange to see him so unguarded. Stranger still that he didn't wake up when she reached an arm across him in her sleep to anchor them together.

He shifts in his sleep, groaning and rolling towards her, onto his back. He doesn't let go of her hand but doesn't hold it, either. It simply rests gently sandwiched between his palm and the solid muscle of his abdomen. Beth watches, breathless, as he frowns, his eyes moving restlessly under their lids. His breathing shallows, and he opens his eyes, looking right at her.

"Good morning," she says, smiling.

Daryl's frown deepens, and before she can say a word, he's squirming his way out of the culvert. Beth follows him, hauling herself out with her elbows and getting to her feet.

Face flushed, he stands there for a moment, pointedly looking anywhere but at her, his hands in fists, tense like a cornered animal.

It's almost ridiculous, his embarrassment, given that they've spent weeks keeping watch for each other while they've slept. Beth feels the urge to laugh, but it passes quickly at the sight of his mounting anxiety.

"Daryl, it's okay, it's -"

"Gotta take a piss."

Beth watches his retreating back as he disappears into the brush, his ears poking out from his messy hair, bright red. She swallows, her throat dry, and tries to think of something other than how her hand felt, pressed gently between Daryl's hand and the plane of his stomach.

Sighing, Beth retreats into the bushes to pee.

Daryl's waiting for her when she returns, and in silence they turn and walk into the woods.

Daryl leads, keeping a brisk pace that Beth suspects she's not meant to match. She lets him charge ahead, keeping her eyes on his back, allowing him the space to avoid her. She knows he can't - won't - avoid her forever.

* * *

Beth watches Daryl as he draws his hunting blade against his cheek slowly and deliberately, wiry beard hairs falling like leaves into his lap.

They've stopped by a little spring that feeds a stream. Daryl finally relaxed enough to let her catch up to him in the mid-afternoon, and now they sit by the stream, Daryl crouched on the rocks, using his knife and a piece of broken mirror to shave. Beth sits on the ground across from him, her back against the trunk of a tall tree.

"You clean up real nice," she says, teasing him. He gives her a look like he can't tell if she is mocking him or just playing. Beth grins at him and he huffs a little laugh, his face turning ruddy under her scrutiny.

"Was startin' to bug me," he says, running the knife against his jaw. Beth watches his careful movements, watches the rough skin of his face redden from the abrasion, his Adam's apple bob in his throat as he swallows.

"Same," Beth replies, screwing up her nose and lifting an arm to indicate her armpits. A smile tugs at the corner of his mouth, and Beth can actually _see_ him stifle it.

Beth looks at the little stream, not deep enough for a proper wash (or at least what passed for proper these days) but clear running. She chews her lip, acutely aware of the dirt and sweat caked to her skin, and decides.

She stands and walks a ways down the stream where the ground slopes, not so far that she's wandered out of his eyesight, but not so close that it's awkward. She strips her hoodie and her layers of scavenged, filthy tops until she's only wearing her bra and her jeans and boots.

Her feet itch for fresh air and hot water, for soap and a pristine white bathroom. _Soon_ , she tells herself. Soon they'll find somewhere safe, with water, somewhere to stop and rest and get really clean. Soon.

For now, a half-assed bird bath in a frigid stream will have to do.

She unties her hair and lets it fall in greasy, clumpy waves around her shoulders. She unwinds her braid and rubs the pads of her fingers against her scalp. She can feel the dirt and sweat and grunge, and oily flakes of skin fall all around her. Where once she would have been repulsed, she now only groans at the relief of scratching and yearns for shampoo to wash it all away.

"Hey," she hears Daryl call from up the bank. She glances and sees him standing there, his back to her, holding something in his right hand.

"Yeah?" she calls back.

"Soap," he says, and tosses it backwards over his shoulder. It sails past her, into a clump of weeds several feet away.

"Dang it, Daryl," she mutters, frowning. He could have just turned around and tossed it to her nicely. She hardly cares if he sees her in her bra at this point.

Of course, maybe _he_ cares.

Beth retrieves the soap from the brush, relieved the soap didn't land in the small patch of poison ivy she finds there. Returning to kneel on the sandy bank of the stream, she holds the bar of soap in her hand. A fresh one, still in its printed wrapper. _Pine View Golf and Country Club_. She's surprised there's still any left, although they don't exactly use soap liberally. Not with the thoughtlessness she had before.

She peels the paper wrapping from the soap and lets it fall to the forest floor. She cups the off-white cake in her palms, lifts her hands to her face, and inhales the scent deeply. It smells like hotel soap, a generic, plain soapy smell, like clean laundry. It smells like _heaven_.

Glancing up the bank to see Daryl still standing with his back to her, Beth removes her dingy bra, shivering as she tosses it at the pile of clothes she's heaped on a nearby rock. It would feel so good to strip everything off, to wash it all and herself too, but she doesn't want to remove her boots in case they need to run. Instead, she soaps up and scrubs her arms and her face and her armpits, scrubs at the dirt and sweat that stain her neck. Her skin stings from the cold water, prickling her arms and stomach, but she doesn't care. It feels luxurious to get even half clean like this.

Beth flips her head forward and soaks her hair, gasping at the sting of cold water on her scalp. Futile as it seems, she rubs the soap into her roots, trying to dislodge at least some of the grunge. She rinses it carefully, gently pulling tangles apart and watching long threads of blond hair disappear with the current.

It's too cold to luxuriate for long. Beth wrings her hair out and grabs the spare rag she keeps in her back pocket, using it to pat herself dry.

"Y'almost done?" Daryl calls from his watchpost.

"Yeah, I'm done!" she replies, squeezing the last drops of water from her hair. It's gotten incredibly long, falling past her shoulder blades and creeping towards her waist. Beth holds the damp strands in her hands, threading them through her fingers, examining the frayed ends. She supposes she should cut it. It would be more practical for her hair to be short, like Maggie's. More practical, perhaps, but somehow not quite _her_.

Beth pulls all of her hair up and piles it on top of her head, securing it in a messy ponytail. She remembers the way the men who tried to take her grabbed her by her hair, using it to restrain her. She frowns, absently rubbing the crown of her head.

An owl hoots nearby, and Beth shivers. The sun has gone down past the trees and it's getting cold in earnest now. Beth glances up the bank to see Daryl's gone.

Beth dresses, pulling her dirty bra and her tops back on. She trudges back up the bank and through the woods to the little ridge where they'd staked out a camp. Daryl's there, banking up a fire much larger than they're normally willing to risk.

Daryl looks up as she approaches. "Thought you might…" he trails off, gesturing with a stick at the fire.

Beth smiles, sitting down beside him, her knee bumping against his. He has his knife and a bolt out, sharpening the tip. The warmth of the fire is intense, chasing away the chill on her skin and drying her hair in a halo of frizz. Her stomach rumbles.

"Guess what," Beth says. Daryl glances over at her.

Beth leans down and rummages in her pack until she feels the cans. Two, without labels. She turns toward him and holds them out.

"It's mystery can night," she says. "Hurray?"

The corner of Daryl's mouth quirks, and he sets aside the bolt and knife.

"My turn, right?" he asks, scratching his chin with the tip of his thumb. Beth nods. Daryl contemplates the cans a moment longer before pointing to the one in Beth's right hand. She nods, and places the rejected can back in her pack.

"I hope it's ravioli or something," Beth says, pulling out her knife.

"Damn, girl, this ain't Thanksgiving," Daryl replies. Beth glances at him, sees the half-smile lurking around his mouth. "We'd be lucky if it was beans. Probably gonna be beets or some shit."

Beth laughs. "I wouldn't mind pineapple or peaches or something. But yeah - no more beets."

"C'mon, Greene," Daryl says, rubbing his hands together. "Get 'er open. Ain't got all night."

Beth smiles, rolling her eyes, and punctures the top of the can with the point of her knife. She hits it three more times, then begins to prise the lid off. Creamy liquid bubbles up through the fissure in the metal.

"Creamed corn," Daryl says immediately.

"Oh," Beth says, unable to help her disappointed response. She's _so_ sick of creamed corn.

"Fed up with it?" Daryl asks, his tone carrying no admonishment.

"No, it's fine, of course," Beth replies, shaking her head. She's embarrassed; it shouldn't matter _what_ food they have, just that they have some. She places the can carefully at the edge of the fire. She's gotten the hang of how to place a can so that it warms quickly, but doesn't scald or heat unevenly.

"Gettin' kinda tired of it myself, to be honest," Daryl grumbles. He twists around in place and rummages in the leaves behind him. "Got good news for you, then," he says, turning back around. In his hands is a squirrel, skinned and gutted, skewered by two sharp sticks, ready for roasting. "We're havin' meat with our creamed corn. Ain't much, but..." He shrugs.

"When did you catch that?" Beth asks, more delighted than she'd have ever imagined at the prospect of roast squirrel.

"Dumbass wandered right by me while I was sittin' up here waitin' on you to finish your spa time," he replies. "Weren't nothin.'"

"Spa time," Beth grouses, trying to hide her smile. "You could use some _spa time_."

"Thought I cleaned up all right?" Daryl says. He slants a look at her, a playful glint in his eye, and Beth grins.

"You do," Beth insists, nudging him in the arm with her elbow. " _When_ you actually clean up." He doesn't reply, just leans forward to arrange the squirrel over the flames. He sits back beside her and in silence they watch the flames lick at the meat. Beth takes the whetstone from her pack and starts sharpening her knife, dragging the blade against the stone. Daryl's quiet beside her, his hands still for once except for the occasional adjustment to the squirrel roasting away in the piney smoke over the fire.

It surprises Beth, then, when Daryl's gruff voice disturbs the silence.

"I shouldn'ta fell asleep," he says, his hands cupped loosely in his lap. It takes Beth a moment to figure out what he's talking about. He means that morning.

"Oh," she replies. "It's okay. We were pretty safe in there, right?"

Daryl exhales in a sharp, disagreeable huff. "It ain't okay. Ain't smart. Sure as hell ain't safe. We gotta take turns."

"I know. We do, mostly," Beth says.

"Think that's enough?" Daryl says, flat and blunt, turning to look at her. His eyes are narrow and hard. Troubled. "Out here, every night, takin' turns? With nothin' between us and them but a goddamn piece of twice and some cans." Daryl pokes at the fire with a stick. "Now we ain't even got that."

It's hard to hear his frustration, the depth of his pessimism. Beth swallows hard, looking down at the knife and whetstone in her hands. She wonders whether it's truly pessimism, or if it's simply pragmatism. Moreover, Beth can't help but wonder if he's _right_ , and even as she wonders, she knows in her gut that he is. He's right - it isn't enough. It's been enough for them to get by, but only just, and it won't be enough forever. There's a reason they haven't run into tons of people like them, wandering in little groups.

Those people are all dead, by now.

"We need a place," Beth says softly, only realising it as the words trip uncertainly from her mouth. She swallows the lump in her throat. "We need to find some kind of place. I don't know what, or where, but _something_. Where we can spend the winter. We have to."

"Yeah," Daryl scoffs. "Until it gets overrun, or people come, or…" He turns slightly and glances at her. His face is half in shadow but Beth knows what he means. The car with the white cross. The men.

"Don't think about that," Beth says, reaching for his hand. It trembles in hers. He's scared. It should frighten her that he is, but it doesn't. Instead, she feels resolve. She knits her fingers with his and squeezes. "Don't think about it. Not yet. We just gotta take it one step at a time. We don't know what's gonna happen or not happen. So let's find a place. Let's start there."

"Won't be safe," he says, the frustration gone from his tone, replaced by something lower, something sadder. "Won't ever be safe."

"I know," Beth replies, squeezing his hand again. He looks up and meets her eyes. This time, he squeezes back. "But it'll be somethin'. And that's still better than nothin'."

Daryl nods, his grim expression lifting slightly at the prospect of having a plan, or at least the idea of one. He chews his lip. "A'right," he says, nodding again. "Tomorrow, we start lookin'."

Beth smiles at him, and soon they're passing the can of hot creamed corn back and forth, and biting every morsel of meat off the squirrel's bones.

Neither of them mentions that finding a place means that they're no longer even pretending to search for their family.


	5. the orchard

_So let's find a place. Let's start there._

 _It'll be somethin'. And that's still better than nothin'._

Beth's words stick in Daryl's head in the days that follow their departure from Pickton, repeating over and over, as they venture deeper into the woods. He isn't sure if she's right, if they ought to try to settle down. Best way to protect a place is with numbers, with people, and they don't have that.

Daryl remembers last winter, all of them running every day, never enough rest or food or shelter or anything. They were better off, then, with the group around them and vehicles besides. Now it's just the two of them, swapping watch shifts each night, protected by nothing more than their senses and the new noisemaker rope they'd cobbled together after leaving the last one behind when they ran from their camp in the night.

Beth doesn't complain. Never says a word about doing her part, sitting up at night while he catches a few hours of shallow, restless sleep. But the shadows under her eyes give her away, the tired, tense hunch of her shoulders, and Daryl doubts he looks much better. They're both exhausted.

They can't go on this way much longer. Holing up some place is no guarantee of safety; they know that for certain, after the prison, after the funeral home. But sleeping out in the open is sure to go bad for them, sooner or later.

All things considered, they've been lucky, so far.

They pass by dozens of places that Daryl considers. Farms and acreages and little whistle-stop towns. He rejects each one. Too exposed, too far from supplies, no working water source, too far from good hunting grounds, too big, too small, too _something_. Often it's nothing more than a feeling he gets, unease in his gut, a feeling that says _this place is easy to find._ There's always a good reason to move on, and they do, the hopeful look in Beth's eyes dimming every time Daryl shakes his head and shoulders his bag and crossbow.

The woods are better. They feel safer, though Daryl knows they aren't. Walkers are everywhere. It's all a matter of cover, of staying downwind. Of outsmarting the other creatures so that they stay predators, never prey.

But the trees provide that. Cover and camouflage. The yellow and brown leaves that still cling to the branches enfold them as they walk. They can disappear in seconds, and it's better that way.

They eat their last can of food from Pickton one morning, sitting close to their fire in the middle of the woods. It's beans, at least, but Beth barely touches hers, just sits silently beside him and pokes at her portion. She's quieter than usual, no cheery "mornin' Daryl!" or smile from her that day. It's cold, the sun doing little to warm them even as it ascends the sky. Daryl figures that's probably what's the matter with her until she stands and walks over to where her pack rests against a tree. Daryl watches her, taking in the discomfort in her posture, his eyes trailing down her back, and he frowns.

There's a dark bloodstain on the seat of her jeans, and Daryl doesn't stop to think.

"Hold up," he says, standing. "You're bleedin'."

Beth turns around and looks at him, a confused frown on her face.

"What? Wh - _oh_ ," she murmurs, looking down at herself. Daryl's confused as a bright blush flames all the way to the roots of her hair, and then her frown turns to a look of horror, and then he gets it. She's _bleeding_.

 _Oh._

Daryl stares at her. The mortification on her face is painful. Out of his depth, he feels his own face heat as he flails around for something to say. "Uh, you wanna stop here for a bit, or head back to the highway, try to find a store, or...?"

Mouth twisting, Beth shoots him an impatient look. "It's just been a while. Maggie and I, when we ran out of… _stuff_ , we figured out - I've got it, okay? I'm fine." She grabs her pack and throws it over one shoulder. "I'll be back."

She turns on her heel and disappears into the trees, an annoyed hunch to her shoulders. Daryl watches her go. He packs their things up, then stands there with his hands hanging by his sides. There's probably a good way to handle this, but he has no fucking idea what it is. When Beth returns a few minutes later, she's wearing a pair of black leggings in place of her jeans, and determinedly looking anywhere but at him. There's something defensive in the way she holds herself, like she's waiting for him to say something about it. Like she thinks he'll make fun of her or be angry at her, like she's done something wrong or stupid.

Like she's wrong or stupid for being exactly what she is.

Daryl doesn't think he's the one who planted that idea in her head in the first place, but he suspects he's done plenty to help it take root and grow.

They shoulder their packs and leave without speaking.

Daryl observes her more closely that day, as they pass under chevron flocks of geese honking their way to the Gulf. He watches her cut a trail into the woods before him, picking her way through the brush and darting between trees, and he can't help but think about it. _It_. The thing hanging in the air between them like smoke. He tries not to, but it doesn't work.

He worries about her blood. He worries about it staining the leaves on the trail behind them, leaving a scent. Attracting walkers, alerting the wild creatures to their presence. Hot shame like a physical pulse beneath his skin follows these thoughts. He shouldn't be thinking these things about her. It's private; he has no right. But they've reached a point where privacy isn't something either of them can afford. He _has_ to worry about it.

But Beth's careful, he sees. When they find a stream, they stop and she scrubs the blood out of her jeans. She stands there with a pack of matches and burns a fistful of balled-up rags before burying the ashes in the rich, rotting heart of the forest floor. She hangs her jeans off the back of her pack to dry in the sun as they walk on, her bright blonde head bobbing along ahead of him, glowing against the brown-grey trees and brush of late autumn.

Daryl resists the urge to check in with her, see if she's hurting. He doesn't want to embarrass her more than he already has, but he knows that if she needs something, she won't say. She's been that way the whole time he's known her. When he'd stop by her cell before a run to see if she needed anything, she'd just smile and say "nope", and thank him for asking, like that dim little cell already contained everything in the world she could ever want. It'd confused him at the time, kind of annoyed him, actually. He'd figured a girl like her would want things. _Expect_ them. He's not sure where that belief came from, but he'd let it go when, week after week, the most she'd ask for was a toy or clothes for Lil' Asskicker.

He wishes she would ask, now, but he knows she won't. Not when she's so embarrassed she'll barely look at him. He's never understood people's squeamishness about this kind of thing. It's natural, just a thing bodies do, like anything else. It's a _good_ thing, he's pretty sure; it means she's getting enough to eat, means she's doing all right.

It means that, despite all signs to the contrary, something inside her has reason to believe the process is worthwhile. That it's worthwhile preparing for the potential of new life even in the midst of death and decay.

It stirs a strange feeling in his gut, knowing that, when she lies beside him that night, fast asleep, she's experiencing something private that he knows little about. Something no man in her life probably ever witnessed.

It stirs an even stranger feeling to see this sign from nature that Beth is all right. Deep inside her, nothing has changed.

She's living.

* * *

Daryl stands back, watching as Beth ducks down to climb after him through a rail fence. The sun sinks towards the horizon in the west, burnishing the brown grass gold and red. It's early yet, but the light is fading fast; the days are so much shorter now.

They're on the edge of a fallow field that looks like it once grew wheat or barley or something, Daryl figures, though he's no expert. Hershel would have known. Beth might, and he'd ask her, except she's stuck to one-word replies for the last couple of days. It's starting to get to him, her silence. He wonders if this is how she felt in those early days, when she'd try to talk to him and he'd just stare her down, because all he could think of to say was _I'm sorry_. As in: _I'm sorry I let your dad get his head cut off right in front of you_ and _I'm sorry we're going to die out here_ and _I'm sorry you're stuck with me_ and _I'm sorry I'm completely and totally fucking useless._

Beth steps over the fence rail and straightens up. She winces, briefly pressing one hand flat against her lower abdomen.

"Y'alright?" Daryl asks.

Beth looks at him, a little sharp. "I'm fine," she says, with a slight shrug, looking down to tighten the straps on her backpack. She blows a strand of hair out of her eyes and walks past him.

Daryl doesn't reply, he just follows her. He scans the treeline on the far side of the field and listens to her stomp her way through the tangled grass.

"This one time, I was home sick from school," he says. "Flu was goin' around. I was probably 8 or 9, I guess. Anyhow, I was on the couch watchin' _Wheel of Fortune_ or some junk, and my guts start rumblin'."

Beth's pace slows, and she falls into step beside him. She may not want to talk, but he knows she'll listen. She's always listening.

"I drag my sorry ass to the bathroom," he continues, "tryin' to decide which is gonna be a problem first, shittin' or pukin'. I end up sittin' on the can and leanin' into the shower. Probably the only time anyone was ever glad they make the bathrooms in trailers so damn tiny."

A smile pulls at the corner of Beth's mouth, and she glances at him. He looks away, scanning the treeline.

"So I'm sittin' there, pukin' and shittin' my guts out - total firehose ass -"

" _Gross_ ," she scolds, smiling fully now.

"Anyhow, I'm a mess, snot and puke all over my face, and I hear this sound. Like a shufflin' sound, kinda. I look up, and right above me's the vent. Shufflin' sound's comin' from there. I don't got time to do nothin' before I hear a crash and the vent falls off, clocks me right in the damn head, this massive fucking possum right behind."

"A _possum_?!"

"So I'm up, pants around my ankles, got puke all over me, I'm yelpin' my head off, and that asshole's hissin' and diggin' his claws into my head like his life depends on it. I manage to bat him offa me, and I'm outta that bathroom like a shot. Slammed the door shut, trapped him in there, still hissin' to beat the band. I was all scratched and bit to _shit_." Daryl pauses a moment, remembering standing in the middle of that shitty old double wide, covered in puke, feverish and bleeding. He huffs. "Got a towel and cleaned myself off best I could and passed right back out on the couch."

"You were home alone?" Beth asks, though it's more of a confirmation than a real question. There's no judgement there, and no surprise, either. Still, he hesitates for several long steps through the grass before answering. Beth doesn't prod him. She waits.

"Nah, my mom was there," Daryl says. "She's passed out in her room, is all. Always was a real heavy sleeper; didn't hear all the commotion."

Beth just looks at him for a moment, then nods. Daryl's unsure why he doesn't come right out and say "my mom blacked out a lot," but there's something in Beth's look that makes him think she knows anyway. After all, he's not the only one who was raised by an alcoholic. It's just that the whole _recovering_ part makes a big difference. He clears his throat.

"Woulda caught the whuppin' of a lifetime for the mess in the bathroom, but my dad didn't come home that night, anyway. Cleaned up the next day."

Beth doesn't reply to that, and when Daryl chances a sideways glance at her, he sees her brow is knit, her lips pursed, like she's considering something thoroughly.

"Your dad whup you a lot?" she asks, after a pause.

"Yeah," Daryl replies. He glances at her again. Beth's smart enough to read between the lines, he knows, and he hopes she's not about to make him _talk_ about it. "My old man whupped me a _whole_ lot, when he could find me. He was a clumsy old drunk - couldn't find his own ass with both hands in his back pockets."

Next to him, Beth bursts out laughing. He looks at her, takes in the way her eyes shine, the way she grins at him.

There's something about her laugh that kinda kills him. He can still remember the way she laughed as she splashed moonshine all over the walls of that stillhouse, her eyes gleaming with joy and rebellion. Her hair whipped around her like the bright tail of a bottle rocket as she spun, arms thrust out like she was holding a pistol in both hands, and wild, near-hysterical giggles and snorts - actual _snorts_ , for fuck's sake - bubbled out of her chest. She gasped and grinned, dousing Daryl's sad excuse for a past in pure, burning liquor.

She'd sounded crazier than a loon, smashing jar after jar into thousands of moonlit shards all over the floor. Her laughter's the kind of sound that would have set his dad's teeth on edge, once upon a time.

But Daryl fucking _loves_ it. She sounded like a damn fool, then, and she does right now, laughing beside him in this empty field, and he loves it. He realizes that it's in his power to hear it more, because he can make her laugh. He just did. He can do it again, probably. He can make her smile. He can make her happy.

That's something he can _do_ for her.

Beth's laughter fades, but her eyes still gleam. "How'd you get rid of the possum?"

"I didn't," Daryl says. "Merle took care of it when he got home. Gutted and skinned it right there on the back porch. We barbecued the little bastard."

"I wish I could have gotten to know your brother better," Beth says. "He seemed nice."

" _Nice_?" Daryl scoffs, side-eyeing her. She looks right back at him, her expression frank and open. She's not being funny. "Oughta get your head checked, girl. Merle got called lotsa things in his day, but nice ain't one of 'em."

"My head is just _fine_ , thank you very much," Beth says, arching an eyebrow at him. She sniffs. "And I consider myself to be an excellent judge of character."

"Pfft. S'pose you saw us all come ridin' up to the farm and thought we were there to sell Girl Scout cookies, huh?"

Beth laughs again, but it's less joyful, a little drier and more hollow. Her expression turns sad, and he knows she must be thinking of her abandoned home. "No, none of us thought y'all were sellin' Girl Scout cookies."

Something presses against the inside of Daryl's chest, something tight and hard, and he wants so badly to ask her what she thought, that day. That afternoon they all came driving up the long road from the highway while Beth and her family gathered rocks for Otis's grave. He wants to know. He figures she must have noticed him and thought _something_ , not only because he roared up on the loud _brap_ of Merle's chopper, but because she _would_. She would notice.

Thing is, he already knows what he thought when he saw her standing there under the trees, a chunk of rock in one hand, all clean, blond brightness and a troubled crease between her eyebrows.

Daryl looked at her, sized her up, and thought nothing. He just thought: _nothing_.

He wants to know if she has something better than that. If she noticed something. Anything at all - just _something_. A better beginning to _Beth and Daryl In the Wilderness_ than him noticing the slight space she took up in the world and assuming there was nothing more he needed to know.

There was so much more, hidden away inside her, and he didn't bother to even look. He'd always been good at reading people, at being able to walk into a room full of people and take its temperature. He honed that skill early. It'd saved him more than one beating when he was a kid, and helped him and Merle out of many tight spots over the years.

But Beth - he'd had no idea. He misread her completely.

"Your dad sure wasn't happy," Daryl says, after a lengthy pause. He chews his bottom lip a moment, and then the words tumble out. "What'd you think of all that, buncha strangers showin' up, campin' out on your land?"

Daryl's looking ahead, scanning the treeline as they approach it. He's not looking at her, but he can feel her gaze on him, heavy and curious.

"Daddy wasn't thrilled that y'all were there, but… I don't know," Beth says. She shrugs. "I kinda liked it, having new faces around, after all those weeks with just us."

"Your dad was probably so worried about me and Shane comin' 'round his daughters, he didn't even notice Glenn."

"Daryl," Beth says, a gentle admonishment. "Nobody'd think that about you."

It's a comment so innocent, so oblivious to the judgement he's faced his whole damn _life_ , that it almost angers him. Yet her eyes are so kind, her expression so soft, that he knows she doesn't mean to deny what he's lived. The way people've been to him. What she means is _she_ would never think that about him. She just doesn't see the same thing others do.

He's not sure what she sees.

After that, the awkwardness between them fades. The silence becomes comfortable as they follow the grid of fences and the sun sinks below the treetops. Late in the afternoon they find a farm nestled in a little valley, the farmhouse and outbuildings surrounded by a sprawling apple orchard. They sit on the fence and watch the farmhouse for signs of life, eating windfall apples and cutting the bruised flesh out with their knives.

The farmhouse is a fine looking old place. Big and white, with a wide porch wrapping around the whole thing, and sprawling oak trees all around. Daryl can imagine the dark-green shade they'd give in summer. The place is bare and desolate now, but it's easy to see it was nice once, when it was cared for.

"Ain't nobody in there," Daryl says eventually, hopping off the fence. "C'mon."

They walk down into the valley between the apple trees. Beth tucks the semi-decent apples she finds in her pack as they go, but most of this year's crop seems to have been eaten by wildlife.

The farmhouse is dark and still. They pause at the edge of the orchard and watch it a few minutes longer before proceeding. Daryl holds his crossbow up and ready and is pleased to see Beth's knife already in her hand at her side as they approach the house and move soundlessly up the wooden steps.

Beth approaches the door first and tries the knob. It creaks open slowly, and she bangs the flat of her palm against the solid wood frame.

"Anybody home?" she calls. Her voice echoes down the hallway. After a long, silent pause, she turns and looks back at him over her shoulder. She shrugs. "Seems okay."

Daryl nods, and they proceed into the house. They search the place top to bottom; there's no one. The rooms are tidy, the furniture covered in sheets and the walls bare, stains visible on the faded floral wallpaper where pictures used to hang. Almost like someone was in the process of moving when everything went to shit.

They split up to look around a little more thoroughly, Beth disappearing downstairs and Daryl heading for the kitchen. It's a big room at the back of the house, and a door leads off to the back porch. There's a window over the sink, between sets of pale green cupboards. Through the faded lace curtains, he can see a little pond and the woods beyond. A pair of ducks flaps down out of the air and land like waterskiers on the surface of the pond as he watches, twilight deepening and turning the sky pink and orange.

It's a beautiful place. It's like something out of an old movie with ladies in great big skirts like circus tents, where everyone sits around on porches fanning themselves and talking a lot of bullshit about how the South is gonna rise again. It reminds him of that, and of the Greene farm. The place they left behind in a tower of flames and smoke you could see for miles and miles. Beth's home.

Opening the cupboard beside the window, Daryl lets out a low, pleased whistle. Inside are several cans of baked beans and soups, and a bunch of individual packets of ramen noodles in a tidy row. There are three jars of pickles and a jar of peanut butter.

There's no dust on any of it.

Daryl picks up the jar of peanut butter and weighs it in his hand. He frowns down at it for a moment, then swings his pack around to stow it inside. He walks out of the kitchen and down the hallway, where he finds Beth standing in the foyer. Her thumbs are looped in the straps of her backpack and her chin's tipped up a little as she moves in a slow circle, clearly lost in deep contemplation of the house.

"Daryl," she says when she finally turns enough to see him standing there. A slow, sweet smile spreads across her face, and her eyes shine. "It's just like _home_."

They'll stay the night. She likes it, so they'll stay.

But the peanut butter - it bothers him. There's a sick feeling of unease in his gut as they make a little camp in the living room, pulling the sheets off the couches and settling in for a meal of garlicky pickles and cold, salty noodles rehydrated in a saucepan. In the centre of the coffee table, they light a plain white pillar candle Beth finds in one of the storage baskets under the table.

"You sleep," Daryl says, once they've finished eating and locked up the doors. He sits on the floor across from her, back against his couch, his knife and whetstone on his lap. "I'll keep watch."

Beth nods, settling onto her couch. She closes her eyes and lies flat on her back for a long time before huffing and turning onto her side. Another long stretch of silence passes, and then she turns over again, this time flipping onto her stomach. She turns this way and that for a while longer, until she finally groans and opens her eyes.

"I can't sleep," Beth says, rolling over to face him.

"Count sheep," Daryl replies.

Beth scoffs, sitting up and raising her eyebrows. "Let's play a game."

"No."

"Come on," Beth says. She pulls her legs up onto the sofa and sits cross-legged, hands resting on her knees. The movement makes the candle's small flame flicker. "Unless you wanna swap shifts and sleep, 'cause there's no way I'm fallin' asleep right now."

"Hmph," Daryl says. "What kinda game? Didn't see no cards or board games 'round here."

"I've got one. It's called 'Would You Rather.'"

"Would you rather what?"

"Would you rather…" Beth pauses, pursing her lips, then grins. "Would you rather drink a tablespoon of someone else's piss, or a cup of your own?"

"Jesus Christ," he mutters. "Ain't doin' neither. What're you talkin' 'bout, girl?"

"It's a _game_ , Daryl," she says, with a gentle roll of her eyes. "It's pretend. You pick between two awful or two really hard choices. Like if you _had_ to pick. Absolutely had to. You can't say both or neither."

He frowns for a moment, considering her question. "My own," he says eventually. "I guess."

"Okay," Beth says, a look of quiet amusement on her face. It makes him nervous, that look. "Now you go."

"Hm." Daryl looks down at his lap and drags the blade over the whetstone several times. "Would you rather… Eat raw meat or rotten? Like a deer that's been sittin' by the side of the road a while."

"Raw," Beth replies, without any hesitation. "Definitely raw. Ugh. I'd rather deal with blood than maggots and like - ew. Good one. Um, would you rather… wear a snowsuit in a heatwave or be naked in a blizzard?"

"Snowsuit. Can't stand bein' cold."

Beth snorts and smiles at him. She pulls her knees up under her chin, hugging her arms around her shins, eyes gleaming in the faint candlelight.

Daryl wonders if this is what the other kids did when he was a teenager. If they sat around and played stupid games with girls, tryin' to make them laugh, make them blush. The boys who could put a sentence together in front of a pretty girl. The boys who had something nice to say. The boys who weren't tongue-tied and shy and angry all the time. The boys who didn't prefer to spend hours alone in the woods, avoiding their piss-drunk dad.

Daryl wonders if it would have felt like this, if he'd known her then. Like someone was pumping his chest full of air until he could barely draw a breath into a space filled to bursting with something he'd never felt before.

Her eyebrows draw together as she watches him, waiting for him to speak, like she _cares_ what he's gonna say. He clears his throat. "Would you rather be stuck with one person for the rest of your life, or -"

"Wait," Beth says, holding up a hand. She frowns, tilting her head, and then Daryl hears it, too. Car wheels on gravel and the low hum of an engine. Her hand shoots out and she snuffs the candle's flame with a quick pinch of her fingers.

"Sounds like a car," Daryl says, moving into a crouch and approaching the window. He shifts one of the curtain panels aside just enough to see outside, to see bright headlights. Car doors open and slam shut. People pass in front of the headlights in long, warped shadows. Every hair on the back of his neck stands up. He turns away from the window. Beth is at his side, her eyes huge and dark in the half light, and her brows drawn together. She already has her backpack on, his in her hand. Beyond her, the candle and the pot of noodles have disappeared. He nods and takes his backpack from her.

"C'mon," Daryl says. He reaches and cups her upper arm, urging her toward the back of the house as he grabs his crossbow off the couch. His mind races.

Up or down or out? Up, they're trapped unless they can find a way out onto the roof and avoid being spotted by someone outside. Down, they're trapped unless there's a cellar door or a window leading outside. Out, and they'll run right into whoever's out there, if they're smart enough to surround the place.

A flashlight's beam shines through the kitchen window, trailing across the ceiling and down the wall. Someone's walking around the side of the house.

There's no time to work it all out, to figure out which way's best. They have to go _right now_. He'd rather go up on the roof and grab their attention so Beth can get away out the back, but he knows that after what happened at the funeral home, she won't go for it, separating.

Truth is, he won't go for it either.

"Basement?" Beth whispers. "There's a window down there, under the back porch. Saw it when I was down there lookin' for food."

Daryl nods quickly and they dash across the house as quietly as they can, slipping through the doorway to the basement just as someone starts to break down the front door. They practically fly down the narrow wooden steps into the dark basement, Daryl ducking his head to avoid the low floor joists. He follows Beth to the back of the basement, past a white chest freezer and several bookshelves crammed with faded, mouldy-looking paperbacks. Beth reaches up and unlatches the window, pulling at the frame to open the hinged windowpane.

"Shit," she hisses, "it's stuck!"

Daryl pulls out his knife, but a creak of floorboards above them makes them both freeze. He looks at Beth in the dim light and sees the panicked expression on her face. Grabbing her arm with his free hand, he tugs her after him, searching frantically for a place to hide. Across the basement, he spots a cupboard built into the space beneath the staircase. Gripping Beth's hand, Daryl runs over and opens the cupboard.

Inside is a low, dark space only a few feet across by a few feet deep. It's about a third full of cardboard boxes with things like _CHRISTMAS LIGHTS_ and _JENNY'S SCHOOL STUFF_ scrawled on them in black marker.

Beth squeezes in past them, pushing herself back against the wall. Daryl follows, pulling the cupboard closed silently behind him. He shoves the boxes up against the closed door to make the cupboard look fuller than it is. It only leaves them with enough space to crouch on their knees in the dark, face to face. Daryl can't see her at all, can only feel the warmth of her in front of him, the rapid puff of her breath on his sweaty clavicle. His own breathing is loud and rasping. He takes a deep, shaky breath to try to slow it.

Her fingertips touch his, and he flinches in surprise. She laces their fingers together, giving him a firm but gentle squeeze.

"It's okay," Beth whispers, the sound barely more than a breath. "We'll find a way out."

Directly above them, the top step creaks.

They stay completely still and listen as one person and then another step slowly down the basement stairs. Beth's fingers stay laced with his, the hot slide of sweat between their palms belying her fear.

"Gotta be here somewhere," a voice says from outside the cupboard. It's deep, a man's voice. Beth's hand trembles in Daryl's. " _Someone's_ been in the house, and it was recent."

"Whatever," replies a second voice, another man, farther away. "Like you're a fuckin' CSI."

"Shut up, man. What're you doin' to contribute?"

"Yeah, well, after what happened to Gorman, I ain't exactly keen on these damn scouting trips."

"How else are we supposed to keep the hospital running, you idiot? Jesus Christ."

"I know, but come on, man," says the second voice. "They're like the third team that hasn't come back in the last few months. It's bad out here."

The knob on the cupboard door rattles, and the hinges squeak as it's opened from the outside. Beth squeezes his hand hard. Daryl knows all the man can see is a bunch of boxes stacked inside a tiny cupboard, but he goes absolutely still regardless. The door is slammed shut with a wooden slap. Beth jolts in response, her fingernails digging into his knuckles.

"This is stupid. There's nobody down here anyway. Waste of damn time." One pair of feet clomps noisily back up the stairs. The man stops at the top and raises his voice. "Basement's clear!"

There's a noisy sigh from the other side of the cupboard door, and a low utterance of "asshole" before the second man follows the other back upstairs.

Daryl remains still for several minutes, straining to hear the people move through the house. Beth stays still, too, but sighs softly. It's impossible to know how many there are, but judging by the voices echoing through the house, Daryl guesses they've got at least five or six people.

They're still in the house, so he figures now's the best time, when there hopefully isn't anyone outside watching the back. Hopefully.

Giving Beth's arm a gentle shake before dropping it, he shoves the cardboard boxes aside and they crawl awkwardly out of the cupboard.

They're back at the window in a moment, and Daryl wedges his knife between the window and the frame where years of expanding and contracting with the seasons have left it swollen shut. He jiggles the knife back and forth, trying not to panic at the sound of boots on the floorboards above them.

Beth stands beside him, looking frantically back and forth between Daryl and the staircase.

The frame gives way and the window pops free of the frame. Daryl flips the window up and gestures at Beth. She sidles over and he bends down to give her a boost. She hauls herself up with her hands and tries to drag herself through the window, but her arms aren't strong enough.

"You sure you checked the basement?" A voice at the top of the stairs, a different one than the ones before. "The whole basement? Y'all were down there all of a minute. Plenty of places to hide in a basement."

Daryl stands and pushes Beth hard, shoving at her ass and thighs, anything to get her out the window. She scrambles through and Daryl follows her, the window thumping closed behind them.

"Can't hide, they'll find us," Daryl whispers as they squirm on their stomachs through the dry leaves and dirt under the porch. There's a small opening in the wood lattice, and he points Beth towards it. "We gotta run. Head straight for the woods and don't stop for nothin'."

Beth squeezes through the opening and rolls to her feet, off and sprinting for the trees like a deer before Daryl can even stand. He gets to his feet and starts after her, but the sound of the back door opening has him dropping to the ground, hoping the porch and the dark are enough to hide him. He presses himself against the lattice and listens as someone steps out onto the porch. He hears the click of a lighter and the sound of a deep inhale. The scent of cigarette smoke carries on the night air.

Daryl cranes his head around to try to find a route to the treeline. The darkness helps, but the moon is out, and they're obviously _looking_ , so it won't be easy to get away unnoticed. Glancing towards the front of the house, he sees one of the vehicles idling, its cherry red taillights glowing in the dark. He squints, peering at the car, trying to see if he's seeing what he thinks he's seeing.

There's a white cross painted on the rear window.

The person on the porch flicks the butt of the cigarette and it lands in the grass a few feet away from Daryl. The back door slaps open and shut again. Daryl doesn't hesitate. He scrambles to his feet and bolts across the yard, heading for the fence. He jumps it and dodges between the trees, pausing behind a large oak to look back at the house, see if he's been followed.

The farmyard and the woods are still and silent but for the sound of his ragged breathing. He looks around him, trying to find a sign of Beth. Her footsteps will be impossible to see in the dark, but maybe there's something. Maybe she thought of something.

"Beth?" he whispers hoarsely, trying to stem the panic he can feel pounding in his chest. There was no time to make a plan to meet up - she could be anywhere by now. He knows she'd stick to the woods and would try not to go far, that she wouldn't want to lose him. But still. What if there were walkers? What if she had no choice but to run?

What if - the very worst of all, the thought he can barely acknowledge - what if one of the men in the house somehow tracked her into the woods and grabbed her? What if she's unconscious in the back of that car right now? What if it's happening again, and he failed _again_?

"Beth!" he hisses, louder this time.

"Daryl!"

Beth's pale face appears from behind a tree another twenty or so feet ahead of him, deeper in the woods. It's hard to see her, impossible to read her expression. Daryl's chest clenches so hard that for a moment he considers the possibility that he's having an actual heart attack.

"Thank fuckin' Christ," he mutters. He goes to walk towards her, but she darts out of her hiding spot and suddenly she's in front of him, shoving herself at him, her arms around his neck.

"I'm sorry," she gasps in his ear, the sound sending goose pimples down his arms, "I just ran and I didn't even see you weren't with me until I was in the woods, and I didn't know what to do so I just hid."

Daryl stands there, frozen and dumbfounded and apparently unable to move his arms to hug her back. She pulls away and takes a step back from him. She's an anxious mess, her hair a rat's nest, sweat beading on her upper lip.

"Are you okay?" she asks.

"Beth," he says, ignoring the question, "it was them. The car had a cross in the window."

Beth frowns, a deep line forming between her eyebrows. "It was a trap? _Again_?"

"Seems that way," he replies.

She looks past him, over his shoulder towards the farmhouse, her frown deepening.

"Come on," she says after a moment, turning back to the woods. "Let's get out of here."

Daryl follows her, and they walk in silence through the dark woods. The bright moon mounts the sky and then begins its descent, disappearing behind the treetops. Eventually they stop at the bank of a creek so narrow it's nearly gone dry, its banks high and bare. An outcropping of red earth on one bank creates a small hollow enclave beneath, worn away by long-ago currents, just big enough for the two of them to tuck themselves inside. They don't light a fire; Daryl just sits down and leans back against the cold earth. Beth curls up on her side next to him.

They rest without speaking. Daryl listens to Beth breathing beside him. He knows she's not asleep.

"What's wrong with people?" Beth whispers eventually. Daryl glances down at her; there are tears shining on her cheeks. Lines crease her forehead and her eyes are sad. She looks so tired. "Why's everybody in such a big damn hurry to make a bad world worse?"

"Dunno," Daryl says. He doesn't know what else to say. There's no way to figure it except that plenty of folks look at chaos and see opportunity. That's all.

Beth sniffs and swipes at her eyes. She rolls over, turning towards him, her nose an inch away from his thigh. She sighs deeply. "'Night, Daryl. Wake me in a few hours."

"'Night," he murmurs.

He stares ahead at the creek bed, and he thinks about the long day behind them. He thinks about the farmhouse and _would you rather?_ and that goddamn jar of peanut butter.

It's not that he _should_ have known - it's that he _did_ know. In his gut, he knew something was off about the place, but they stayed anyway. Because it reminded her of home. Because it made her happy.

Because it made him happy to make her happy.

There's something there, Daryl knows. He doesn't know what to call it - it's not something he's got words for. Just knows that it's there, between them, every time their eyes meet. Every time they move more than twenty feet apart and come right back together with a relieved, mutual half-smile, like it's starting to feel unnatural to be apart. Which it is.

It electrifies the air, makes it crackle.

Thing is, she feels it too. She's aware. He knows it, can see it in those wide eyes of hers, and in the way her cheeks and the tips of her ears turn pink sometimes when they look at each other for too long.

 _Oh_.

Daryl's pretty sure she started it, too. Her and that damn moonshine. Shit's evil, the way it made all that _stuff_ come pouring out of both of them like vomit on that porch, their fear and grief in great big messy puddles on the floor between their feet.

He woke up the morning after that night at the stillhouse with his head pounding from the moonshine and the heat. He remembers the shame that flooded him as he recalled the things he'd told her, things he'd felt and been unable to hide from her, things she'd seen and understood and put into words. He recalled Beth's eyes shining at him in the dark, no disgust or judgement in them, only curiosity and kindness. And this strange relentlessness, like she knew he would open to her, like there was no point in hiding because she could see right through him anyway.

He'd laid there on the hard ground, mind racing and stomach turning, trying to figure out how to undo the whole thing, unwilling to find out how Beth'd look at him now.

But when Beth woke, she'd merely clutched her head and moaned about hangovers, muttering "never doin' that again," before grinning blearily at Daryl and asking him if there was anything left to eat. There was still a smear of soot on her pale cheek.

That was it. Not a word about any of it. No awkward silences. No pity. No judgement. Just Beth, laughing and saying something about wishing Waffle House was still around.

Looking back, he should have known he was screwed.

Daryl didn't know it worked like this. That it could happen like this, all at once in a big rush. That a person could go from being just one of the group, one of the many whose safety was in his hands, to something else. Something more. An individual person, sparking and bright like a live wire, holding his attention every minute of the day.

He doesn't know what to call it, this head-swimming, stomach-churning, freight train roaring in his ears kinda feeling. If he'd ever believed feelings like that really happened, which he hadn't, he'd never have guessed that of all the people left scrabbling away at survival in this world, the one who'd make him a believer was an 18-year-old farm girl with a face like summer sunshine.

An 18-year-old whose father had trusted him, had thought he was worth something. Now here he is, thinking these things while Beth sleeps soundly beside him, her head pillowed on her arms at his hip.

What would Hershel say, if he knew? Or Rick, or Maggie, or Glenn? He can picture how Carol's eyes would dim in disappointment, how Michonne's lip would curl in disgust. A sick, cold feeling bores into his gut.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, there's a sharp laugh like a rooster's crow. Daryl doesn't have to wonder what Merle'd say. Somewhere back there, a part of him shrugs. _Don't matter. They're dead._

But they'd all trusted him. _Learned_ to trust him, after a long time of looking at him like he was trash. Useful trash, but trash all the same. But their looks had turned warm when they were at the farm, turned to a kind of respect and trust that scared the shit out of him.

They'd trusted him, then. They'd still trust him, if they were here. If they all weren't dead. If they hadn't joined the hordes that threaten the flimsy tin can alarm circling their campsite each night.

They'd trust him to look out for her, he knows. They'd be glad to know she's with him. No matter how his gut twists when she smiles at him, the way his chest gets tight when she tangles her fingers with his.

They'd trust him to be there for her, to do right by her. To _be_ right with her.

Daryl exhales a long breath and cracks his neck.

It _doesn't_ matter. Not really.

It doesn't matter that he's never felt like this before. Doesn't matter he's never met a person in all his life who could make him smile just because they're smiling. Doesn't matter that he knows he can't live without her, that the thought of her absence fills him with a kind of terror he hasn't felt since he was a kid.

It doesn't matter. None of it matters. What matters is that she's safe, that he keeps her that way. Helps her survive for as long as he can.

As for how he feels about her, it's like to make him stupid, get her killed, so it isn't hard to push it aside. To pack it in a box, and put that box away.

He has to put it away.


	6. the creekbed

**Warning** : This chapter contains some graphic violence as well as mentions of rape. Please read with care. 3

* * *

Daryl wakes from a shallow sleep to the frosty morning air touching his face, and the sound of quiet singing.

" _Swing me way down south; sing me somethin' brave from your mouth._ "

He doesn't open his eyes, and he keeps his breathing slow and steady in case she's watching him. She'll get shy and quit if she knows he's listening.

" _I'll bring you pearls of water on my hips, and the love in my lips, all the love from my lips._ "

Beth trails off and hums a few bars, making a soft whining sound like she's imitating a fiddle or an electric guitar solo. A smile tugs hard at the corner of Daryl's mouth, and he opens his eyes just a slit to see her.

She's crouched a few feet away from where he lies, still wedged under the rocky outcropping of red dirt they'd found the night before. She's out from under it now, sitting in a slice of morning sun.

Puffs of steamy breath swirl around her head, illuminated by the slanting light. On the dry, flat creek bed where she's hunched, she's spread out the contents of both of their backpacks before her. The pillar candle and jar of peanut butter from the farmhouse, ammo and spare handguns, hunting stuff, a few forks and spoons, and dozens of miscellaneous bits and pieces they've picked up along their way like magpies. She's organizing things, taking stock, and humming to herself all the while.

It's a cool, clear day; Daryl can see a few wispy white clouds drifting in the blue sky beyond the bare treetops, but that's it. Good weather for what they'll have to do today - hunting.

"Mornin'," he says, sitting up, his voice hoarser than a bullfrog's croak. He coughs a couple of times, trying to clear the congestion from his lungs. _Fuckin' smokes_. He'd kill for one right now.

Beth turns and smiles at him, eyes bright. The sadness that had shadowed her face the night before is gone.

"Mornin', Daryl," she says. "Hope you're in the mood for peanut butter, 'cause that's all we got."

He scoffs, and moves over to sit beside her. She hands him a spoon and the jar of peanut butter, and they eat in silence for several minutes, passing the jar back and forth.

Daryl's thinking about their surroundings and which way they ought to go to find some game when Beth gives a little yelp and her shoulder slams into his. She grips his knee with one hand and flaps her other arm, brandishing her peanut butter-covered spoon like a weapon.

"The hell?" Daryl says, his face flushing.

"Sorry," she says, breathless, as she turns to him. Her eyes are wide with alarm. "There, um. There was a spider. It must have - it was on my _shoulder_." She shudders hard, grimacing.

"You afraid of spiders or somethin'?" he asks, trying not to smile.

" _Yes_ ," Beth says. She arches an eyebrow at him. "Go ahead. A farm girl in a world full of walkers, scared of a little spider? It's hilarious, Maggie used to bug me all the time about it. Go on, laugh all you want!" She grins as she says it, her cheeks flushing bright pink.

Daryl scoffs. "Ain't gonna laugh at you."

Beth gives another shudder and rolls to her feet. "Now I got the heebie-jeebies," she mutters. Popping the peanut buttery spoon in her mouth, she shakes the dirt off her jeans and rubs her hands vigorously up and down the baggy sleeves of her black hoodie. Stretching her arms over her head, she shakes her hair out and pulls it back up into a high ponytail at the crown of her head. She pops the spoon out of her mouth and drops it in her pack, completing the series of movements with practiced familiarity, like a dancer.

She's gotten so accustomed to living rough.

Daryl looks down, licking the last of the peanut butter off his spoon. They divide up the gear Beth had spread out on the ground. Once they've packed up, Daryl hands Beth his crossbow.

"C'mon," he says, tipping his chin. "We gotta get us _some_ kinda dinner, or else it's gonna be peanut butter again."

"Yessir, Mr. Dixon," Beth says, grinning and hefting the crossbow into the cradle of her arms.

She doesn't ask him which way they should go, doesn't look to him for any kind of direction at all. She just walks down the dry creek bed, downwind from where she's headed, scanning the banks for signs that an animal has passed through.

Winter's coming fast, now. The days are short and the woods have turned dark and dull, dead and frostbitten. They have no shelter and next to no food, no family or friends. Nothing but the things they carry, and each other.

As he watches Beth bend down to examine some tracks in the dirt, a sense of calm settles over him and, for a moment, his worries fade to a background hum. He remembers how he felt at the funeral home, weeks ago, coming home empty-handed from hunting, annoyed and worrying, always fucking _worrying_ , and how calm he'd felt the moment he walked in the front door and saw her there. Beth hadn't been doing anything special; she'd been sitting on one of the uncomfortable-looking, fancy sofas in the parlour with her injured ankle elevated on a green velvet cushion. She was reading a book, unbothered by the preserved walker lying in its coffin only a few feet away, like the guest of honour at some kind of endless wake. She'd just looked up from her book, smiled at him, and softly said, "Hey, Daryl."

 _We can do this_ , he'd thought, looking at her there, safe and comfortable and happy enough. _We can stay right here for the rest of our lives._

That same calm, knowing feeling fills him again like air pumped into an old tire, as Beth turns back and smiles at him, crossbow in her arms. It didn't work out, last time he felt this way. Most things don't tend to work out. He knows it. But that doesn't seem to stop him from believing in it, even if it's just for this moment, and he begins to walk towards her, splashing in the creek water.

They can do this. They can stay together and live.

They can stay together for the rest of their lives.

* * *

"Do you miss your bike?"

It's late afternoon and they've had no luck hunting. The deer tracks Beth found by the creek were too old and they lost the trail a couple of hours later in the woods. Daryl's been leading for about the last hour, now, and Beth's been lobbing random questions at his back for about the same amount of time.

"Wasn't my bike. It was Merle's," he says, stepping over a gopher hole.

"Okay, do you miss _Merle's_ bike?" Beth says, a hint of exasperation in her tone. Daryl tries not to smile.

"Nah," Daryl says. "Miss havin' a bike for damn sure, but that was more Merle's style."

"Did you have your own bike? Before?"

"Mm-hm. '83 Harley Sportster. Wasn't so chopped up as Merle's."

"Cool," Beth says. There's a brief pause where the only sound is their feet stomping through the dead grass and weeds. "I have no idea what that means."

"I come across one like it, I'll be sure to show you," Daryl says. She laughs, and his stomach responds with a little dive, like topping the first hill on a rollercoaster.

They maneuver around a large fallen tree, and on the other side find a small abandoned campsite. A water-stained green and grey tent is half-collapsed between two oak trees, sagging between them. Nearby, a makeshift fire pit overflows with burnt pieces of wood and charred tin cans. The rest of the site is scattered with plastic coolers and knapsacks, but before Daryl can look to Beth to see if she wants to investigate, she's striding over to the tent, her knife in her hand.

Daryl goes to her side, and they stand outside the tent for a beat, listening for walkers within. Everything is quiet and still but for a couple of crows cackling to each other nearby.

"Cover me," Beth whispers, reaching for the zippered door to the tent with her free hand. Daryl holds his crossbow up, pointing it over her shoulder. She unzips the tent and takes an abrupt step back into him, clapping a hand over her nose. The smell hits him an instant later. Rotting flesh.

"Damn," Daryl says, trying to get a look around her. Beth crouches down, and Daryl sees there are two bodies in the tent, both of them half-rotted away by maggots and beetles. They lie side-by-side, what's left of their heads by the door. There are two pistols lying on the tent floor, one by each body.

He swallows. It's not hard to understand what happened here.

"Oh," Beth murmurs, leaning over the bodies. She stands shakily and turns away.

Daryl's about to ask her what her problem is when he glances down and sees something catch the light on one of the bodies' chests. Grabbing his handkerchief and holding it to his face to mask the smell, he bends down and looks closer. There's a pendant around the neck, a long silver chain and a flat circle of tarnished silver. Stamped in the middle of the circle are curlicue words: _Little Sister_. Daryl looks at the other body beside it, sees an identical chain disappearing under the ragged shirt still clinging to the bones. He tugs on it and the pendant slides into his hand: _Big Sister_.

They lie close, their arms twined together.

Daryl stands and turns around slowly. Beth's a few feet away, her back to him, her knife still clutched in one fist at her side. Her hands are shaking.

He turns back to the tent and stares at the two sisters for a moment longer before bending down and drawing the zipper back up, closing them in once more. They could probably use the spare pistols, but they don't _need_ them, exactly. When he turns around, Beth's walking away, moving around the fallen tree and carrying on the way they'd been headed. Daryl watches her for a moment, then hefts his crossbow back over his shoulder and follows her.

Beth doesn't say another word for the rest of the afternoon.

* * *

"I guess that's it, huh?"

Daryl looks up at the sound of her voice. He's in the middle of cracking open the shell of a large snapping turtle to get at the meat inside. It was all they'd been able to catch that day, Beth spotting it lurking in the shallows of a stream when they'd stopped for water. The thing'd been a real pain in the ass to kill, and he's got the scratches on his forearms to prove it.

Beth had been stringing up the alarm around the camp they've made for the night, and she stands staring down at the length of rope in her hands, at the empty juice containers and hubcaps rattling together like a sad windchime.

"If we stop moving, find a place…" Beth says slowly, then trails off. She's looking away from him, chewing her bottom lip, and he can tell there's something she doesn't want to say.

"What?" he asks.

"If we stop movin', we're givin' up on findin' 'em," she says, looking up to meet his eyes, her gaze even. She juts her chin out a bit, like she's bracing for a punch. Daryl knows she's waiting for him to call her an idiot, remind her they're all dead, or good as.

Daryl considers the possibility, just as he has many times, that some of the others escaped into the woods like they did, got scattered like glass from a busted window.

It's possible. Daryl doesn't like to think too much about _possible_. He hasn't for a very long time; after all, what good had it ever done him, to believe?

"Ain't givin' up," he says, after a moment. "Just tryin' to keep livin' long enough to see 'em again."

Beth looks back at him for a long moment, then down at the hubcap in her hands. If he didn't know better, he'd say the soft expression on her face at that moment is gratitude.

She doesn't say anything more about it as Daryl finishes butchering the turtle and she secures their camp. He slides the meat onto stripped, sharpened sticks, and sets them carefully across the little pit that contains their fire.

Beth comes and sits beside him to wait for dinner, her boots to the fire, her black hoodie pulled up over her head to guard against the settling cold. Daryl chews his lip, wondering if they can chance a bigger fire once the meat's done. It's getting damn cold at night, every night.

"I know I probably shouldn't, that it probably makes things harder," Beth says after a while, once the gamey-fishy scent of roasting turtle meat begins to fill the air between them. "But I think about them a lot. Everybody."

Daryl doesn't answer her. He reaches instead for his knife and one of the busted bolts in his pack, wanting his hands busy.

"That baby," Beth says softly. He glances over at her, and a tiny smile plays across her mouth. "She could drive you nuts but she really was a _good_ baby, wasn't she? Considering, you know," she pauses, shrugging her shoulders awkwardly. "Considering everything."

He nods, trying not to shut her down, trying not to prevent her from saying whatever it is she's working up to. He doesn't want to think about any of them, least of all Lil' Asskicker. He's barely allowed himself to think of them in all the weeks since they ran from the prison, and he doesn't intend to start now.

"I always wanted kids," Beth continues, and something trembles deep in her voice. She takes a breath. "I always wondered - who would they be, you know? Not would they be President or go to Mars or invent something, but like - would they have my same nose? Would they like strawberry ice cream or chocolate? Would they be adventurous or a homebody, or would they be afraid of thunderstorms, or…" she trails off, turning her head slightly so the side of her face disappears from his view. She takes another shuddery breath, and Daryl's stomach rolls over.

"I just wonder if she -"

"Beth," Daryl says, his voice little more than a rasp.

"I wonder - I can't help it, I just - I keep wondering what happened to Judith," she whispers, looking back at him. Her eyes are wide and wet with tears. "Where'd she end up? Why couldn't I find her and the other kids? Why -"

"Don't," Daryl says. For his own sake or hers, he's not sure. Beth turns back to the fire, her face obscured by her hoodie. Neither of them speaks for a few moments, and Beth leans forward to adjust the turtle meat over the low, hot flames.

"Do you believe in heaven?" Beth asks him, when she sits back. She glances at him. When their eyes meet, he shakes his head.

Beth smiles. "I get that," she says, poking at the fire absently with a stick, sending up a little plume of sparks. "I do, though. I believe in heaven. Not like, you know, harps and angels and clouds and stuff. Not like what I thought when I was little. It's more like… I don't know. Maybe we'll all see each other again, someday. Someplace else. Someplace… better."

Her eyes shine with tears as she looks at him, smiling to herself at whatever visions of reunion and harmony fill her brain. "I need to believe it, you know?" she says, her voice wavering and her smile trembling.

Daryl nods. He understands; he just doesn't believe in it himself. He can't. But Beth does. Somehow, she still does.

She sighs hard, swipes at her damp cheeks with her hands. Without a word, she shifts and curls up at his side, resting her cheek on his thigh, her hand cupping his knee. There's a hole in his pant leg there that wants patching, and he can feel the heat of her bare palm on his skin.

He should probably give her a shove, he supposes, push her away, tell her to quit being so soft. He places his knife and the bolt he'd been repairing on the ground, and lets one hand rest on Beth's upper arm. She smiles and moves closer, her fingertips pressing into him through his pants.

Daryl's head falls back against the tree trunk behind him, and he lets his body soak up the warmth of hers against his. Lets his hand stroke her arm. Lets her take the comfort she somehow seems to find in him.

She didn't know. She couldn't. She didn't know how he huddled next to her at night, listening for the fall of even the finest little pine needle. Nights when he could have heard a mouse a mile off. Nights trying to figure out where to go, what to do, how to keep her safe.

She doesn't know he'd do anything for her.

"Well, well, well. Ain't this cozy."

Daryl's on his feet in an instant, crossbow in hand, Beth scrambling up beside him, but it's too late.

A tall man with grey, curly hair steps over the rope stretched between the trees. Two more men step silently out of the shadows behind him. They're ragged looking, but seemingly well fed enough, armed with rifles and knives and bows. Their eyes take stock of the meagre camp, roving impassively over Daryl and Beth like they're not even there.

Daryl knows that look. That hungry, measuring look. He'd seen it enough times in Merle's eyes. He remembers the last time he saw it, when they stood in the woods outside Atlanta, heads bent together, Merle's face stretched in a shark-tooth grin as they worked out how they were going to rob the camp.

Daryl knows that look much too well. He's seen it many times, and it's never led anywhere good.

"Name's Joe," the grey-haired man says, crouching down by the fire and holding his palms up to warm them.

Beth's arm brushes against Daryl's, and the glance she slides his way is heavy. He doesn't look at her, keeps his crossbow trained on the man.

"Listen," Daryl says, trying to keep his voice calm, angling his body in front of Beth's, "you can see it's just us here, and we don't got nothin' worth takin'. Take that turtle meat there, if you want, but that's all we got."

Joe smiles, looks at Beth. Daryl watches the man's eyes track from her feet, up her legs, lingering on her body, to her face. An icy, sick sensation squirms in the pit of Daryl's stomach.

"Nothin' worth takin'?" Joe laughs. "Well now, brother, you _know_ that ain't true."

Beth yelps as another man grabs her from behind. Panicked, Daryl reaches for her but he's grabbed from behind as well, and the crossbow is knocked from his hands. He tries to tell her to run but a punch to the gut sucks the wind out of him and he drops to his knees, gasping.

The man holding Beth hauls her away from Daryl to the other side of the fire, beside Joe. Beth struggles in his arms, dragging her feet and yanking at her arms to free them from the man's tight grip. She's frightened, but one look at her face and Daryl can tell she's pissed off, too.

"Easy, honey, easy," Joe says, laughing softly as he stands upright. He laughs like they're all just good friends hanging out at the bar. Daryl's stomach rolls over. One of the men holding Beth unbuckles the two belted holsters on her hips, removing her gun and her knife. His hand must linger too long on her ass as he does it, because Beth's head snaps around, fury in her eyes, and she thrashes, trying again to pull herself free.

"Don't touch her," Daryl grunts, struggling against the arms holding him. "Don't fuckin' touch her -"

"Now, fella, here's the thing," Joe says. "There's two ways this can go. We can do this the easy way, or we can do this the hard way."

"What's the easy way?" Beth asks. The man has his arms wrapped around her neck and her waist as her hands grapple at his forearms.

"Shut up, Beth, don't -" One of his captors rears back and punches Daryl in the side of his head. Pain explodes there and his ear rings, nearly drowning out the voices around him.

"The easy way is Len fucks the girl first," Joe says, tipping his head in the direction of the grinning, dark-haired man with the bow, "on account of how he saw her first. Then the rest of us fellas fuck her."

The men chuckle together, a dark, hollow sound, and the bravado drains out of Beth's expression. Pale fear replaces it, her face turning ashen in the firelight.

"What's the hard way?" she asks, her voice smaller. Her hands have gone still against the man's arms, her wind-chapped fingers pink with cold.

The barrel of a gun presses into Daryl's temple, hard, and Beth's gaze shifts from Joe to him. Her eyes are wide and dark in the firelight. She stares at him for a long moment, her brows drawn together and her mouth a flat line, her nostrils flared like a deer's when it cottons on it's being hunted.

Daryl sees the moment she decides.

"All right," Beth says, nodding. Her gaze slides away and she looks directly at Joe. Her hands drop from the man's arm, forming fists at her sides. She straightens up and pushes her shoulders back. "If you don't hurt him."

All Daryl can seem to see are her hands. Her ragged-nailed, calloused, tough little hands.

Joe claps his hands together like they've just made some kind of great deal. Daryl's stomach plummets to around his knees and he hears himself shout something. He thrashes wildly, struggling to break free. One of the men holding him whips the butt of his pistol against the back of his head with a bony crunch and stars explode in front of his eyes. For a moment everything is darkness and trailing lights, and he feels consciousness fade out and back in again.

Beth's shouting something, he can't hear what, and the men behind him are laughing. Joe's laughing, too, and then Beth is walking away with the dark-haired man, disappearing from the circle of light thrown by the campfire.

The men drag him to the fire and dump him in the dirt at their feet. The five of them warm themselves there, over the fire that Beth herself built, her hands angling glass and mirror, carefully coaxing a sunbeam into a flame.

Daryl's head spins, black spots swirling at the edge of his vision. He clings to consciousness, straining to hear Beth's footsteps as she moves off into the brush, as he gropes frantically for a way out of this.

Joe takes the turtle meat from the fire and bites into a piece, passing the rest to the other men. Daryl thinks of the way Beth eagerly tapped his arm when she spotted the turtle lurking in the weeds, of the grin on her face when Daryl caught it. The meat is gone in seconds.

"She's sweet," one of the men sitting beside Joe says. He's cleaning under his nails with the point of a large knife, talking without looking up. "Needs some meat on them bones, but we ain't particular."

"Long as there's somewhere warm to stick it," one of the standing men replies. He's short and ugly, with long, stringy hair and mossy teeth. They all laugh.

"Shame she ain't a virgin," the man restraining Daryl says, punching him in the shoulder like they're old friends. "Pretty crafty, scoopin' that little thing up. You kill her folks, or you just find her tremblin' in the road, all by her lonesome?"

Daryl says nothing, just stares into the fire. The woods around them are silent; he can't hear Beth's footsteps anymore.

"Hope she don't complain much," another adds, when Daryl doesn't reply. "I hate it when they complain."

Joe reaches over and grabs some of the firewood Daryl had split hours earlier, when they made camp. When Joe tosses a stick on the fire, a shower of sparks crackles upwards, rising into the night sky like fireflies.

Daryl watches the sparks and thinks of Beth's eyes in the candlelight, the way they glow. The way she seems to reflect so much light.

 _What changed your mind?_

He wonders if she can still see the fire, right now. If the light can still find her through the trees.

The smoke stings his eyes.

"What's your story, partner?" Joe asks, then. Daryl meets his eyes over the crackling flames, but doesn't answer. Joe frowns. "Hey now. Ain't no cause to be bitter."

There's a sound like a thick branch snapping from somewhere in the woods. It snaps once, then twice. Silence falls.

"That's a handgun," one of the men grunts. They all get to their feet, weapons drawn.

Daryl sees a flicker of movement beyond the glow of the fire; a streak of light disappearing behind a tree.

Joe stands, staring out into the darkness. "Len, you good?" he shouts.

There's no reply. A prickle of awareness climbs up Daryl's spine, standing his hair on end. Something's not right. Or rather, something's different. Something's changed.

A gunshot rings out from only a few feet away, and Joe tumbles into the bushes behind him, his arms flung out in surprise.

Daryl doesn't hesitate. He shoves himself back into the man holding him, sending him sprawling into the dirt. The man's head hits the tree trunk behind him with a crack. Daryl scrambles for the man's rifle, ripping it from his hands and pausing to kick him viciously in the gut and chest. The man tries to shield himself, blocking his face with his arms. There's scuffling behind Daryl, grunts and shouts, and the snap of a handgun discharging again.

The man at Daryl's feet grabs for his legs. Daryl yanks his foot loose and kicks the man again before standing back and pointing the rifle down, discharging it in an explosion of gore in the side of the man's head.

"You little _bitch_."

Daryl turns to see Beth standing on the far side of the fire, hands clasping her handgun, her arms pointed like an arrow at the short man, the last of them. He's pointing a shotgun at her; the others lie in bloodied heaps in the dirt, unmoving.

Daryl barely registers the standoff before he's raising his own weapon again, pointing it at the man. The man looks over at him, his expression shifting from aggression to fear as he realises he's outnumbered. He drops his weapon, holding up his hands.

"Listen, man, just -"

Daryl pulls the trigger, hitting the man between the eyes and spattering a halo of blood on the trees behind as he falls to the ground.

Beth stares at Daryl across the fire, the gun still gripped in her hand. She gives a strange, choked-off gasp, and drops the gun to the ground.

"It was in my waistband," she says flatly. "They didn't check."

Wary of the gunfire attracting walkers, Daryl grabs his crossbow and pack off the ground and slings them onto his back. He grabs Beth's, too, and her holsters, which lay half under one of the dead men lying in the dirt. He takes a quick look over the bodies strewn around the campsite, and sees the compound bow the dark-haired man had been carrying leaned up against a tree. Striding over, he grabs it and the spare arrows beside it.

Daryl tosses Beth's pack and her holsters to her, taking her by surprise and hitting her in the gut. She blinks and frowns down at herself for a moment before she straightens up and pulls the pack on.

"C'mon," Daryl grunts, jerking his head at the woods. He turns and heads toward the waxing moon hanging low in the sky, not waiting for her to pull herself together.

He stomps ahead through the dark woods, shoving tree branches out of his way, not bothering to hold them for her. He hears her following him, her steps heavy and slow.

 _All right, if you don't hurt him._

 _There's still good people, Daryl._

 _All right, if you don't hurt him._

 _I don't think the good ones survive._

 _All right, if you don't hurt him._

* * *

They walk for about an hour. Neither of them speaks. Daryl leads thoughtlessly, stomping through the underbrush, venting his rage on the trees and the dirt. He has no idea where to go, he never really has, and right now in the darkness he has no real idea where exactly they are.

"Daryl?"

Beth's tentative voice stops him in his tracks. He huffs out a few breaths, then turns around to look at her. Pale-faced and wide-eyed, she stares at him like he's a stranger.

"What?" he snaps.

"Can I have some of your water?" she asks, her voice a soft rasp. "I'm all out."

He glowers at her. He reaches behind and grabs his water bottle off his pack and tosses it to her. She catches it, taking a small step back from him, like she's afraid of him. _Good_ , he thinks, and the anger that's been coming to a boil inside him for the last hour erupts.

"The _fuck_ were you thinkin', huh?" he barks.

"What?" she asks, staring at him, her brows drawn together. Her eyes are dull, stunned.

"I said what the fuck were you thinkin', goin' off with him? The fuck was I supposed to do, huh? Sit there and listen to you - god _damn_ it!" He spins around, clenching his right hand into a fist, and punches the first thing he makes contact with, the trunk of a poplar tree. The skin across his knuckles splits, and the pain feels good, feels _right_. It spurs him on.

"How'm I s'posed to protect you, you go off doin' stupid shit like that, huh?" the words are pouring out of him now like a flood, like vomit. Beth's mouth hangs open and she looks stricken, but he can't stop. He doesn't _want_ to, not when his heart's still pounding like it's gonna burst out of his chest, not when men like them can just walk right up and _take her_. "I can't protect you! You get that? No shit you ain't gonna make it, pullin' dumbass moves like that so I can't even -"

"Shut up!" Beth shouts suddenly, her voice tearful and shaking. Daryl's mouth snaps shut. Beth throws his water bottle to the ground with a soft thud. "Are you seriously _mad at me_? This is all somehow _my fault_? I ain't _mad_ at you 'cause you couldn't take on six men on your own! I was tryin' to keep 'em from _killin'_ you, 'cause they were gonna rape me no matter what either of us did! But I could live with that as long as when it was over, _you_ were still there, you asshole!"

"Fuck, Beth, you shouldn't -"

"How come you're allowed to lay your life down for me but I can't do the same for you, huh?" She raises a hand and for a moment he's sure she's going to hit him. Instead, she shoves him hard in the chest and he actually stumbles back a step. "How come?"

"They were gonna kill me anyway!" Daryl snaps, taking a step back towards her.

"So what did I do wrong, then?" Beth asks, shoving him again, this time with both hands. Her face is screwed up into an agonized scowl, tears shining in her eyes. "You _jerk_! I did what I had to, same thing you woulda done, and now you're being so - _screw you_!" She stutters to a halt, gasping, and then she flips her hand up and thrusts one defiant middle finger in his face. She stands there in front of him, red-faced and fierce, glowering and mad as hell, and the anger that's been driving him for the last hour drains out of him in a rush.

Beth went with that man, with no certainty that she'd be able to fight him off, to save Daryl's life.

What she was willing to accept as the cost of saving his life makes his gut twist. All that anger is gone, and what's left behind in his hollow chest is shame. Hot, burning shame.

He's an idiot. He's an asshole. He hates himself for it.

"Shit," he mutters, still staring down at his feet. He has to look at her, he knows. He has to face her. There's no stomping away from this. He lifts his eyes to find her watching him closely. Her anger seems to have disappeared as quickly as his - she watches him with a look he can only describe as hurt. He's hurt her.

"I'm a dick," he says, his throat tight. "Dumb fuckin' asshole, you know that, shouldn't listen to nothin' I say."

"Stop," Beth says tiredly, shaking her head at him. "Just say you're sorry, and _mean_ it. That's all."

Daryl stares at her for a moment, chewing his lip. She watches him with those wide blue eyes, still hurt and swimming with tears, but filled too with unwavering kindness. She's already forgiven him, whether he can say the words or not. But she oughta hear them; she deserves that much.

"I'm sorry, Beth," he says, forcing himself to meet her eyes. He swallows hard. "I was shit-scared. Took it out on you. Ain't right and I'm sorry."

"Okay," she replies, nodding. Her hands grip her upper arms like she's trying to cradle herself. "Please don't do that to me again, storming off and yelling at me. It's really mean."

Daryl nods and looks down. He knows it's mean, knew it when he did it. He _wanted_ to be mean.

Blowing out a deep breath, he wonders if he'll ever get to truly leave his old man's house.

When he looks up again, Beth's still watching him. Their eyes meet, and she shakes her head, and suddenly her face crumples and she lets out a sob that sounds like it's wrenched from her by force.

Daryl doesn't hesitate; he reaches out and pulls her to him, wraps his arms around her. She goes easily, falling into him and wrapping her arms around his torso. She presses her cheek to his chest and she hugs him, hard, harder than he would have guessed she could, her arms tight around him. He can feel her hot, gasping breath through his shirt as she shakes in his arms. She rubs her cheek against the flannel of his shirt, and with a sickening lurch of his stomach, he gets that she wants him to comfort her. _Still_. Even though he'd said all that mean shit to her. Still.

"I'm sorry," she mumbles, then, shaking her head. "I didn't know what else to do."

"Don't gotta say sorry, girl," he replies, tucking her head under his chin. "You don't got a damn thing to be sorry for."

"I was so scared, Daryl," she whispers, "I thought they were gonna kill you and I would have done _anythin'_ -"

There's a hard lump in Daryl's throat and his eyes sting, and all he can do is hold her close and press his cheek to her matted hair.

"You did good, Beth," he manages, brushing his fingers down the long fall of her ponytail. "You did real good."

Her arm loosens and she reaches down to nudge his fingers with hers - he gets the hint. Their fingers interlace. She sighs roughly and pulls back to look at him, her tear-streaked cheeks shining even in the gloom of the forest.

"You okay?" she asks him, tilting her head. "For real?"

He looks down at their clasped hands, and in a rush he thinks that he'd like to kiss each of her fingertips, starting with those precious fucking middle fingers.

"Mm-hm," he says, dropping her hand and taking a step back from her. The soft crease between her eyebrows deepens, but she says nothing.

They stand that way, in the blue clearing, listening to the silence pulse around them. There are no bugs now, no sticky, buzzing swarms of mosquitoes or flies, no crickets rasping - nothing. Even the nightbirds and the other creatures that hunt and creep at night have gone quiet.

The only sound is her shallow breathing, and his.

"We gotta get outta here," she murmurs eventually. She's quiet a moment, then turns to him. "Don't we, Daryl? I mean - that's _it_ , right?"

He's thought about it before, plenty of times. Ever since finding himself stuck outside Atlanta with his brother and a bunch of frightened strangers. He wanted to ditch everybody but Merle and head north, up around his old neck of the woods. That's where he wants to go now - back to the mountains he wandered on his own when he was a kid, where there were fewer people to begin with.

No one can make it alone. He believes that, believed it for a while now. He's found whole new _ways_ of believing it since the prison fell.

But people are dangerous.

"Yeah," he says, finally. "Yeah, we do. What I said's true - I can't protect you. I know you can handle yourself, but we ain't gonna last out here. We gotta get away from people. We can't stay out here forever. We gotta find some place and secure it. Make it strong. See if we can…" He trails off. He doesn't know what happens after that. He can't allow himself to even think what happens after that. But what he does picture is Beth on the sofa at the funeral home, smiling at him over her book, welcoming him home.

 _there'd be birthdays and holidays and summer picnics_

It's too much. He puts it away.

Beth exhales harshly, but says nothing. Watching her knit brow as she looks down at the ground, he knows what this means to her. It means giving up the faint hope of finally finding some sign of the others. It means no longer sticking to the area. It means going wherever they need to go.

It means moving on.

He waits for her to refuse.

"Okay," she says. Her voice trembles. She blinks back her tears and nods, a determined lift of her chin. "So - north, right? It's away from Atlanta, away from people. With the mountains and all, maybe there aren't even that many walkers up there."

It's a relief to know they're on the same page, that she's come to the same conclusions as him. He doesn't know what he'd have done if she insisted on staying.

Well. He _does_ know. He'd have stayed too.

"That for me?" Beth asks, pointing at the compound bow in Daryl's hand.

"Oh, yeah," he says, passing it carefully to her. "For you."

"Thanks." She slings it over her shoulder. "You gonna show me how to use this thing?"

He nods, and she smiles. They look at each other in the moonlight. Beth exhales, blowing loose strands of blond hair out of her face.

"North, huh?" She looks up at the moon in the sky and blinks. She glances back at him, a faint smile on her face. "No time like the present."

They go north.

* * *

 **Note** : The song Beth's singing when Daryl wakes up is "Truth No. 2" written by Patty Griffin, as performed by the Dixie Chicks.


End file.
